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I say “hello” into a telephone and Chucky says “hi” back. I realize that I perhaps haven’t adequately prepared myself for what this might feel like. He clears his voice and I clear mine. In that stillness, the panic passes. An actor emerges. Brad Dourif is not Chucky, though he’s played him upwards of eight times, in film and television. It’s an iconic role, one that produces pop-cultural gravity even as it emerges from out of it. In the voice of a lesser actor, it might still be popular. It would certainly be commodifiable. But in the hands and cords of Dourif, it becomes iconic à la semiotics; Chucky’s apprehension of extermination, his seriousness of life, his devotion to the action of acting—all of these tendencies resemble the referent, Dourif.
From his cinematic beginnings—namely, Billy Bibbit in Miloš Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)—seriousness of craft combined with openness of every moment’s possible feeling. Dourif’s ethic and style of work finds as equal a partner in established auteur (John Huston, David Lynch, Michael Cimino) as it does first-time feature director (Fritz Böhm, Jowan Carbin, Chucky writer/creator Don Mancini). It’s a presence that folds as easily into big-budget spectacle—Wormtongue in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), the Gemini Killer in William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist III (1990)—as it does micro-cinema exertion. Of the latter, there’s no better expression than his role as Bud Cowan in Kurt Voss’s Horseplayer (1990), the story of a lonely man whose life is agitated into unknowable shape when he’s pseudo-adopted by a pair of avant-garde artists. It’s tempting to look at Dourif’s résumé and suggest a propensity for playing horrors of one type or another—icons loom large. If there’s a pattern, though, rather than simply the working life of a supremely talented and dedicated actor, it’s of exacting vulnerability. Horseplayer is, like all great works of cinema, a film about looking. Over the course of nearly 50 years, Dourif has provided the eyes and the desire behind them.
In the waning days of August and in advance of an October retrospective to be hosted by Anthology Film Archives in New York City, I spoke to Dourif about his family and community life in the theater, the lessons teaching gives actors, and the ends all arts and lives must mediate.
Do you maintain an art-making practice in semi-retirement?
No, not really. You know, Chucky still keeps me busy. There are threats to make a[nother] movie, a couple of movies. I’ll do those—it’s like family to me. But beyond that, if it’s a bad guy, I say “no.” So, mainly, it’s “no.”
Do you have a sense of why that happened in your career? When one of the characters you became known for playing was a “bad guy”?
I think [because] Billy Bibbit was in an insane asylum, I began to be seen that way. Doing Chucky sealed the deal.
Was it freeing to embrace that sort of pre-casting?
You know, my [first] kid was born. Most of the decisions I made were, “If I can still get myself to show up to work, then I’ll probably do it.” There were rare things where I just said, “I can’t even get myself to go to work doing this.” Those were the only things I ever said no to.
So at a certain point, it really was just what works with your schedule, with family time?
Exactly. When you’re an actor, the family—that’s the schedule you have to prioritize. So I did, and the kids went with me to a lot of the places where we shot, and they would have a bit of a vacation while I worked.
Your work as an actor started in the family, right? Your mother was in the business?
Yes, my mother was an actress. When I was growing up, she did community theater, and I would watch her. She used to read aloud to us and, I was aware of this extraordinary talent that was my mom. Eventually, I just looked at it and said, “I wanna learn how to do that.” And it became clear that I also had a little bit of talent, and I was terrible in school. So it was like the only truly consistently bright spot for me. My mom was my inspiration, but it was just where I fit best.
And all of your early experience as an actor was on the stage?
In those days, you didn’t get a film unless you did theater first. And once you get something that’s a bit of a hit, you know, people looking at you, you get good reviews, suddenly there’s interest in you for film. It’s not like that anymore. But that’s the way it was when I was young.
That sometimes seems to be to the detriment of performances nowadays.
Absolutely. But you know, there are fewer and fewer things done these days. So the competition is much, much greater. My daughter’s an actress, and she’s really good. And time after time, she’s sought advice. I used her for my auditions and she used me for hers, so that was an important relationship.
That’s Fiona, right? What has it meant to work with her these last few years, on Chucky and The Shuroo Process?
It’s been a joy. We were both in Toronto [for Chucky], and our apartments were next to each other’s. She cooked meals every night; I did the dishes and cleaned up. That was a great relationship, and it was fun acting with her. Although, like I said, we would do each other’s auditions, so I was very used to acting with her.
When did that start?
Really when I started doing Deadwood [in 2003].
What was your process like when you were a younger actor? Do any directors early on, in film or theater, stand out as particularly influential on the way you went about your work?
I learned a lot from Jack Nicholson. I mean, by the time I started doing film, I’d spent several years studying. So I had a process in place that I would use to create a character.
What was it about Jack, especially?
His generosity. And his sense of play, although I didn’t really define it that way. But later on, I realized that playing is crucial. I mean, if I’m not up there playing and having fun, then it’s gonna suck. I’m gonna suck.
Did your teaching work circle back to inform your acting?
Very, very, very much. In one thing more specifically than anything else. Every performance has a job that it does for the story. And that’s not negotiable. You must supply those things, understand what those things are. Everything you do is conveying them. And being able to talk about them in a sensible way, that was a requirement. I mean, I had to do that. I learned a lot about what I can fight for, and what I absolutely have to supply.
I have to imagine that understanding of your role—and the clarity with which you could talk about it—would really help a director who was making their first feature. You’ve worked with a lot of emerging filmmakers, especially in the last couple of decades.
You know, looking back at it, the ones who had a really good idea of what they wanted to do were the ones who worked. They had really made an effort to get the money that they absolutely needed, garnered the people that they absolutely needed. And they knew what they wanted, they had a real visual idea. You know, the camera is the poet. And their grasp of what [the camera] is made those movies work.
Can you talk a little more about that? “The camera is the poet.”
I went to talk to Sandy Meisner because I wanted to do his professional class. And he said that to me, and it just got in my head from that point on. I said, “That’s absolutely right.” And his conclusion was wrong—I thought that then, and I still do. But the fact that the camera is the poet is absolutely the case.
What was his conclusion?
That the actor is less important in film. In a certain sense, he’s right, but really, he’s wrong. There is nothing that’s unimportant in film. I mean, the story is the performance of the actors. That’s what you see. You know, I like to watch movies on airplanes. I’ll sit back and I’ll see a couple of rows ahead, a film being played, and I’ll watch it. You can tell if it’s a good movie or it’s a bad movie. If it just looks like talking heads, it sucks. If you can tell what’s really going on by watching it visually, then it’s probably a good movie.
Which returns to what you were saying, about directors who had a developed visual sense to their storytelling.
I mean, there’s no point in doing a movie unless you see it. It’s unbelievable how wide open [filmmaking is] based on what a camera can do. There’s no dolly on Horseplayer. And yet it was visually beautifully done. They used blocking, all kinds of things, and the fact that it was all done on sticks gave it a kind of cinematic style and sense that was absolutely right for that story. And I think that movie really worked. Cheap as hell to do, and it really worked.
Horseplayer is so great. And it doesn’t self-limit, because of budget or any other reason. Does that ethos connect to your approach to some of these characters? Call them monsters, call them creeps, I’m not sure—they’re never being sent up. Even figures like Wormtongue or Dune’s Piter, even when they act monstrously, they’re reacting to something, usually fear. They’re never “just” anything.
Well, Chucky is a monster. I guess Chucky is terrified of oblivion. That’s really what’s going on with him. And he loves his job. Beyond that, I kind of always made an effort to find out what the story was suggesting and what was deeply seeded in the character that would shine a light on that story. A lot of times it’s fear. But it needs to be more specific than that.
Maybe the only outright monster you play is in Jungle Fever [1991]?
I wasn’t a monster in that.
Maybe serving a monstrous role?
You know, yeah, but I think what Spike Lee was getting at is these unconscious pressures that make it impossible for us to see what we’re doing. He was very interested in why things happen the way they happen, and in how subtle and pervasive racism is.
I don’t think there is such a thing as “evil.” I think you can describe any human being—and what any human being does—and never use the term. I don’t care how horrific, it’s not needed. What the word tends to make us want to do is say that something isn’t human. And that’s dehumanization, that’s evil. The idea of “evil” seeks to dehumanize. I can understand when something is really horrific, I can understand this gut reaction of “It’s not me, man. There’s no part of me that’s that.” But the truth is, it’s not true. We’re all human beings and we’re all capable of doing something horrific, if we’re really honest. Now we won’t do it, you know? But we’re capable.
Do you think The Exorcist III dares us to say “evil”?
There are things that cannot be borne, that human beings go through that are too much to endure. So you’re just dragged out by a wave, and you’re powerless. I did a play by Tennessee Williams, The Two-Character Play. He was writing about what happened to his sister, how much he loved his sister. And that was unbearable to him. There was nothing in that relationship that he could endure. He had to deal with her, even though he couldn’t begin to grasp how horrible it was. Life presents us with those things.
So I think when we’re talking about The Exorcist III, this is a guy who really snapped. And you know, only part of him is there. The rest is not available. If he’s a spirit, then, yeah, you can do that. I guess what I’m saying is, when you see him, he’s only part of a human being. He’s shattered. And there’s nothing left there.
It’s interesting that you bring up the Williams play. Thinking about that monologue you give in The Exorcist III, once Gemini comes back, to express this unbearable sort of thing—whether it’s a spirit, whether it’s a memory—the film has to evoke overt theatricality.
Well, when Blatty first wrote it, I think he was very concerned with wanting there to be life after death, frankly. And I think he wanted proof that God existed. I don’t think he ever found it, but he came across this thing where there was some evidence for some supernatural event, that looked like something otherworldly had really happened. And because of that, maybe if that can happen, maybe there is such a thing as God.
I mean, he told me this, and if you look at [his 1978 novel] Twinkle, Twinkle, “Killer” Kane and The Ninth Configuration, [its 1980 screen adaptation and] the first movie he directed, you can see that that’s what it’s about, that if there is such a thing as the devil, there is such a thing as God. And you know, my opinion is there is no way in hell that you can find and prove that there’s such a thing as the devil or there is such a thing as God. I don’t think that’s doable. I think eventually, Blatty felt that, and there was kind of a despair in him.
There’s that unbearable thing poking through again.
I mean, I’m in my seventies now. And I’m getting closer and closer to looking at dying. My mom died last year. She was 99. And um, there’s no one, you know… we’re being pushed toward the end of the cliff. You know, everybody I know is old. All my friends are old. So I’m looking at that, and part of it is unbearable. The idea of that—I don’t wanna die. But I’m going to, and somewhere, I’m going to have to accept it. Does that make sense?
I think so, in as much as it can. Do you find yourself confronting it every day?
I mean, it’s always there. I have all kinds of things I tell myself, and one of them is, “No matter what happens, I won’t mind.” At one point, it used to scare the hell out of me. And now, it’s much less.
Do you talk about it with people, day to day?
Um, not really. No, there’s no need to. I mean, I only talk about it now because there’s a reason to talk about it. I’m not looking at it in terms of myself. I’m just telling you about something that’s going on in my head. But when I really think about it, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. It’s fine. You know what it is? Eventually, there’s nothing I can do about it, and there’s no point in worrying about it.
Right. I mean, you can’t help but draw it back to all the ways we make art to square the big thing. How do we square the question of expiration with what we’re leaving behind?
I have a theory about that as well. I used to think that what I would leave behind were the characters I played and the films I did. That was what was important. But I got to a point where I no longer thought that. What I can leave behind is much subtler. You know, when you’re acting in a movie, how you conduct yourself and how you go about what you do is probably more important in the long run. Because the huge number of people that it takes to make a movie—the grips, electrical, gaffers, the camera crew, set builders—are all there because they love it. And if you go and really throw yourself into it, and are all about the story, you make their day better. And they take something from what you’ve done with them, and they affect other people, and those people affect other people. And there are kind of ripples. It’s important that everybody contribute that way when they work, when they do anything in the world. 
is a New Jersey–based writer. He’s an Associate Editor at Bright Wall/Dark Room, and his writing has appeared in Reverse Shot, MUBI Notebook, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
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