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	<h2>PROGRAM NOTES #5</h2>
	<h4 class='accent'>BRAD DOURIF</h4>
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		<h2><a href="/programnote/ProgramNote5.pdf" target="_blank">Download printable file</h2></a>
		<h3>THE DEVIL'S MINION</h3>
			<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5.jpg" title="BRAD DOURIF" />
				<p><em><strong>by Tom Fallows
				<p>This article has been revised and updated from a version that originally appeared in What Culture! on Sept 20, 2007.
				<p>Used by kind permission of the author. Illustrations for this version added by the Production.</em></strong></p>
					<p>He’s looking at us, looking straight through the goddamn screen right at us. His eyes are weeping, his mouth a vile hole that spits blasphemy and mocking horror. “A decapitated head can see for approximately 20 seconds before it dies,” he hisses. “I must admit it makes me chuckle every time. It’s a wonderful life...for some.” We have seen this man before and devotees of the cinema will know him as American character actor Brad Dourif. Here, in The Exorcist III (1990), he is playing a demonic serial killer and though he is just a performer, an actor in a part, his eyes look like they’ve seen too much real craziness, like a devil really does possess his soul. “I do have an incredibly violent heart,” Dourif once said in an interview. “In that sense I certainly am one of the devil’s minions, aren’t I?” We know Dourif is only an actor, but sometimes it’s a comfort that there is a screen to keep him from us.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-13.jpg" title="The Exorcist III (1990)" />
						<p><h5>The Exorcist III (1990)</h5></p>
					<p>Since 1975 Dourif has appeared in over 100 roles in film, television and on the stage. Fans of cult cinema will recognise him as the shrieking voice of devil doll Chucky in the Child’s Play series, while others may remember him as the crow-like Gríma Wormtongue in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03). He’s been a central figure in revered Hollywood successes like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) as well as colossal failures like Heaven’s Gate (1980) and David Lynch’s Dune (1984). On television he’s been in such classic shows as Star Trek and was the benevolent Doc Cochran in the small screen masterpiece Deadwood (2004-6).
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-11.jpg" title="Deadwood (2004-2006)" />
						<p><h5>Deadwood (2004-2006)</h5></p>
					<p>But though he can rank as one of the most versatile actors of his generation, he is seldom cast as the leading man. Physically he’s off centre, angular with wiry long hair and eyes like a two black pits. He often shows an inability to restrain himself, no matter how inconsequential the part; opening himself up like an emotional wound and letting his insides drip out onto the screen.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-8.jpg" title="Child's Play (1988)" />
						<p><h5>Child's Play (1988)</h5></p>
					<p>A film like Tobe Hooper’s Spontaneous Combustion (1990) is a clear example of Dourif’s refusal to hold back in a film someway beneath his talents. Here he plays David Bell, a man whose repressed rages finally begin to erupt in literal balls of fire, eventually immolating himself and those he holds dear. In a phone conversation with an infuriating radio technician (played with irreverent glee by film director John Landis) we see Dourif desperately trying to suppress his fury, twisting and flexing, his face reddening and those eyes screaming both biblical fury and abject fear. He pushes his body to the point where it seems he may actually twist in two and the subsequent pyrotechnic inferno that burst forth from his arms seem unnecessary. Dourif does not need special effects to show a man on fire. This intensity then, coupled with his oddball looks and his deft ability to play at the top of his range (without ever going over it) has seen Dourif play a lot of weirdos.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-4.jpg" title="Star Trek: Voyager" />
						<p><h5>Star Trek: Voyager</h5></p>
					<p>In Dune he was alien and poisonous and gave advice to monsters worse than him. In 1990s Graveyard Shift he is a sweaty piece of white trash, playing a Vietnam-vet exterminator with a personal vendetta against rats. “Do you have any idea what a VC rat eats?” he asks through a mouthful of tobacco. “Try raw American whole male.” He has worked on numerous occasions with director Werner Herzog, another man with an eye on outward eccentricity and an inner heart of darkness. In 2009 he made fleeting appearances in both Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant with Nick Cage and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done with Michael Shannon. More interestingly in The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) he was another extra- terrestrial, wearing nothing more fantastic than a grey shirt and a black jacket, while in 1991s Scream of Stone (1991) he played a mountain climber headed back up the Cerro Torre to reclaim the fingers he lost to frostbite – the climb itself he dedicates to Mae West.
					<p>Performances such as these often border on the edge of sanity, but then we should remember that onscreen at least, Dourif has always been mad. He made his screen debut locked in a mental institution in Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Here as the stuttering Billy Bibbit he was an innocent child, someone in retreat from the dangers of the outside world. “You’re a young guy, you should be out in a convertible, bird-doggin chicks and bangin beaver,” Jack Nicholson’s R.P. McMurphy tells him. But Billy’s not so sure. In a group counselling session he recalls a time when he nervously asked a girl to marry him and she refused. The others laugh at his naivety and Billy laughs too, but his eyes betray the devastating trauma behind the episode. “Billy wasn’t that the first time you tried to kill yourself?” asks the Big Nurse.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-3.jpg" title="One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)" />
						<p><h5>One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)</h5></p>
					<p>In a bid for realism Forman filmed Cuckoo’s Nest in a working asylum, the institution allowing the actors to live and sleep on the wards amongst the actual inmates. Dourif was 25 years-old at the time and he has always been acutely receptive of his surroundings. We are left to wonder how much of this environment rubbed off on his later performances. Did he find his Exorcist III serial killer here, or his Chucky or his Gríma? Did he see madness here as something abstract, or as something as a part of himself, a part of us all? When not watching the inmates, Dourif was watching and learning from Jack, observing, “Nicholson does not defend himself at all from the camera.” Dourif took this approach to heart and ndeed we can see Jack in some of his later work. Both actors are open and intense, full of passion and aggression. In many ways Dourif is like Jack’s twisted younger brother – the one they keep locked in the attic.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-10.jpg" title="Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)" />
						<p><h5>Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)</h5></p>
					<p>For his performance as Billy Bibbit Dourif won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA and was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. In some ways this was the accumulation of all he had worked for up until that point. Born in Huntington, West Virginia in 1950 acting was ever present, something in his blood. His mother was a natural performer, playing out all the parts in her bedtime stories and gracing the stage whenever possible. At the age of 13 Dourif saw her rehearsing for the role of Anastasia and instantly fell in love with the craft. At 19 he left for New York and soon found himself part of the Circle Repertory Company, building sets and studying acting under Marshall Mason. Sandy Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse was another mentor and taught young Dourif, “the fundamental skills to survive,” on stage. Under Meisner he was encouraged to make mistakes, to be embarrassed, to fail. He was a part of making Dourif fearless beneath the spotlights.
					<p>Roles in plays such as The Ghost Sonata and The Doctor in Spite of Himself followed, but it was his lead in When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? (despite Meisner warning the actor that he wasn’t ready) that proved his breakthrough. His performance was admired by director Miloš Forman who subsequently cast him in Cuckoo’s Nest. Following his Academy Award nomination Dourif was considered, “amongst the Hollywood elite,” but he withdrew, suspicious of the fickle acclaim and overbearing press attention. He had no desire to be a star, only to act – only to disappear. After turning down numerous projects Dourif returned to American cinema in The Eyes of Laura Mars in 1978 and then in director John Huston’s film Wise Blood (1979), based on the novel by Flannery O’Connor. Both film and novel tell the story of Hazel Motes, a man looking for God and driven to self-hatred by his own feelings of wretched sinfulness.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-5.jpg" title="Wise Blood (1979)" />
						<p><h5>Wise Blood (1979)</h5></p>
					<p>He seeks to purge these feeling by denying Christ’s divinity, “the blind can’t see, the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way!” but despite his sermons he is a lost soul desperately hoping for salvation. The film is designed as an evangelical satire entwined in Southern Gothicism, but from the outset Motes (played by Dourif) is too bitterly agitated to be funny. He is both zealot and perverse, sinewy and dead serious. “Your conscience is a trick,” he spits to a crowd of onlookers. “It don’t exist! And if you think it does you best get it out in the open, hunt it down and kill it!” And then there are his eyes, described by one character as, “the color of pecan shells and set so deep they are like passages leading to nowhere.” There is some of Billy Bibbit in Dourif’s performance, notably his boyish shyness, but there is also plenty of the Dourif to come, the madness and the fire and brimstone.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-6.jpg" title="The Lord Of The Ring: The Two Towers (2002)" />
						<p><h5>The Lord Of The Ring: The Two Towers (2002)</h5></p>
					<p>His lack of fear broaches areas few Hollywood stars dare venture and he is at ease with allowing himself to appear weak on screen. Looking back over his rogue’s gallery of creeps we begin to see feeble men corrupted in the face of evil. In the Exorcist III he is the puppet of the devil – his “master”- while in The Lord of the Rings he is the grovelling aide to the wizard Saruman. Since Saruman is played by Dracula himself Christopher Lee, it is easy to see Dourif as a modern Renfield. In David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) he plays lapdog to Dennis Hopper’s Frank, a sick bastard if ever we saw one, revelling in murder, rape and degradation. Dourif merely sits or stands in the background, drinking in the violence with junky-wild eyes and a hyena’s laugh. He’s a pitiful audience to insanity – the kind of dog it’d be ok to kick. In their two films together Lynch used the actor sparing, but to great effect, though Dourif is often wasted onscreen.
					<p>His lack of star status means he must work to put food on the table, a factor that explains appearances in forgettable junk like The Interceptors (1999) or Critters 4 (1991). When the time came for Dourif to rerecord his dialogue for the 2007 remake on The Wizard of Gore, he had forgotten he’d even been in the film in the first place. Sometimes a job is just a job. “Being a character actor is a very insecure life,” Dourif has stated. “You don’t always get to do what you want. I guess the reason I’ve held on is because I love it.” But as we know, even in these parts he rarely gives less than his all and even when he should be having fun, he isn’t. His role as the voice of a possessed doll in Child’s Play offered Dourif the chance to enjoy himself and go over the top, but to get into character he would pace the room before hurling himself into a frustrated agony and fainting afterwards. “It was scary seeing the rages Brad would work himself into,” observed screenwriter and friend Don Mancini. All this for a talking doll movie.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-9.jpg" title="Child's Play (1988)" />
						<p><h5>Child's Play (1988)</h5></p>
					<p>But this talking doll movie is clearly close to Dourif’s heart. He’s played Chucky five times already and this year will revisit the character once again in Curse of Chucky, a film that co-stars his real life daughter Fiona. Maybe Chucky is fun for all the family after all. If this wasn’t enough to appease the actor’s fan base in 2013, then news of his return to the New York stage after a reported 29 year absence should quell their hunger.
						<img class="headshot" src="/programnote/p5-2.jpg" title="Ragtime (1981)" />
						<p><h5>Ragtime (1981)</h5></p>	
					<p>Opening June 19, Tennessee Williams’ The Two Character Play co- starring Amanda Plummer is described as part Southern Gothic, part black comedy, and something that Dourif will clearly relish. The actor claims to have fallen out of love with the theatre in the 1980s, but was drawn back by the chance of working with Plummer. Indeed, she is another actor who seldom holds back and putting them together could be the equivalent of putting a match together with a fuse. So on June 19 Dourif will be up there, looking directly out at the audience. The only difference this time is that unlike the movies there’ll be no screen to keep us separate from him – to keep us safe.
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		<h2>ABOUT THE AUTHOR</h2>
		<p><strong>Tom Fallows</strong> is a writer and screenwriter with an interest in cult and exploitation cinema. He has written extensively in the field, producing work on classic American horror cinema, 1970s Hollywood exploitation films, French Films policiers, Latin American Cinema and Spaghetti Westerns. His acclaimed series Cult Movie Actors featured prominently on the online entertainment magazine What Culture! and offered a dissection of the careers of such actors as Pam Grier, Rutger Hauer and Brad Dourif.
		<p>In 2008 he co-wrote a biography on George A Romero published by Pocket Essentials, described as a, “comprehensive” text by reviewers.* Outside of writing, Tom has hosted several Q&A sessions for various professional and education organisations, including an introduction to George Romero’s Day of the Dead and an on stage chat with the actor John Hurt for Carlisle College. Tom is currently studying for an MA at Exeter University.
		
		<p><em><strong>On AMAZON
		<a href="http://www.amazon.com/George-Romero-Pocket- Essential/dp/1842432826/" target="_blank">George A. Romero (Pocket Essential series)</a>
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Creat By MiNi SheLL
Email: devilkiller@gmail.com