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(eerie, tinny child piano music)
(choral voices chanting)
(moves to fuller piano music)
- American monster movies
are popular almost everywhere in the world.
Tonight your guide for this rare odyssey
is the rising star of horror, a real little terror.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's Chucky!
- It's showtime.
Where the hell's Andy?
Did you miss me, Andy?
Andy, snap out of it!
You act like you've never seen a dead body before!
- I never saw a doll like you before.
- Amazing, isn't it?
(man groans)
I don't have a problem with killing.
(Chucky screaming)
- Chucky did it.
- What are you talking about?!
- Just stay away from that doll!
- it's just a doll.
- Prove that it's just a doll.
- Say something, dammit!
- How's it hanging, Phil?
Presto, you're dead.
- You're dead.
- No, you are.
- No, you're dead, we killed you!
- You just can't keep a good guy down.
I am Chucky, the killer doll!
And I dig it!
(thunder rumbling)
(Chucky laughing manically)
(eerie, tinkling music box xylophone music)
(ascending harp music)
(moves to enchanting, eccentric full orchestral music)
(paper scrapes)
(equipment rattles)
- [Kyra] So can you take me back to the beginning
of when all of this started?
- You know, I was a horror fan all my life.
I wrote the first script when I was a student at UCLA.
And I was really inspired by the horror movies
that I grew up on as a kid.
I especially loved Brian De Palma movies,
like "Carrie" and "Dressed to Kill," and "The Fury."
So I gravitated to writing 'cause it was cheaper.
You know, so it's just the cost of paper,
and in those days a typewriter.
This was like before computers. Can you believe it?
- For a while there in the early '80s, every weekend,
a new slasher movie was opening up.
It was just such a flood of them.
- When the first "Nightmare on Elm Street" came out,
and it was in 1984, it was very unusual to have a hero,
be a villain like Freddy Krueger,
who was disfigured and evil.
It was a new kind of horror figure.
It was a relatable horror figure. It wasn't a monster.
It wasn't somebody grunting, and groaning,
and coming and breaking in.
He was a guy, and he had an attitude.
He liked you, you know, he sort of made you feel special.
And there was something about those elements
that draws the audience in.
- Oh, you know, that was back in the time when
the killers in movies had personalities.
You know what I mean?
They became like the hero,
but there was like a shape shifter,
'cause it was also the comic relief.
- The sense of humor is huge.
The fact that he had humor to his malice.
- That's back when Freddy Krueger was like,
"Welcome to prime time, bitch!"
And so those kind of characters found themselves
as really the staple of the movie.
It wasn't about the teen, the teenage kids,
and it wasn't about the heroine.
Those movies were about the villain.
- It paved the way for other anti-heroes who you hated
and were afraid of, but you also were attracted to them.
And it did, it paved the way for a Chucky.
- Well, what happened was my wife and I, Liz had been
in England, in London.
And I bought a book called
"The Victorian Dollhouse Murders."
Because the idea of dolls coming to life scared me
to death when I was a little kid, Talking Tina
from "Twilight Zone."
And when I came back, I gave her the book and I said,
"I would love to do something with dolls."
And she said, "Well, there actually was this screenplay
that came out about six months ago called "Blood Buddy."
But it had been passed on by the studios.
I said, "I'm curious to read it."
I had done "An American Tail."
For my next project. I wanted to do something scary.
And she gave it to me,
and I really liked the overall idea of it.
A great idea, Don's concept
of a doll that is programmed
by Madison Avenue to come to life.
- On Madison Avenue, they refer to children
as consumer trainees.
And so like training children to want things
that they don't need and become compulsive buyers.
And then in the midst of the '80s
and Cabbage Patch Dolls had just come out.
They were this huge craze.
And I realized that the whole living doll trope
in the horror genre, I had seen Talking Tina
on the "Twilight Zone."
I had seen "Magic" with Anthony Hopkins.
But I realized that no one had ever done
the living doll thing as a full fledged feature
where you treat the doll as a character who
can actually emote and you can give him pages of dialogue.
And "Gremlins" had just come out.
So it's like with "Gremlins," I realized
that animatronic effects had gotten to a point
where they were sophisticated enough
that the puppets could actually emote.
So sort of all these ideas came together,
and out came the first Chucky script.
(typewriter keys clacking)
- The veteran slashers like Freddy, and Jason,
and Michael Myers were getting a little tired by then.
- Don came to my office and we met,
and I got the rights to the script.
- He had at the time, a deal at Disney.
And so he had an office on the Disney lot.
And I'm like 20 or 21, and so it was a really big deal
to have someone who was established
and had done such big work, take an interest
in what I had written and support it and get it going.
- The slasher genre was ready for a burst of new blood,
and Chucky supplied that in spades in 1988,
with the release of "Child's Play."
- And did some work on my own on some ideas for it,
because there wasn't, there wasn't
the "Frankenstein" moment in it.
There wasn't the moment that brought the creature to life.
(thunder crashes) - He just, he was a doll
that had blood in him, not real blood,
but you could be its blood buddy.
I felt very strongly that there should
be something very different about this.
And so the story starts off in the original
with a murderer, Brad Dourif, running through the streets
and the police are chasing him.
And he takes refuge in a toy store.
- And he's shot by a police detective.
But before he dies, he does this arcane voodoo ritual
that takes his spirit and puts it into this inanimate doll.
- That's really what brought the creature to life.
(man screams) (thunder crashes)
The name was very important.
In Don's script it was Buddy.
For me, the men that truly haunted my childhood
were James Earl Ray who shot Martin Luther King,
Lee Harvey Oswald, and Charles Manson.
So Charles Lee Ray are all three of those names.
And I don't know if you know that. Yeah.
And from there his friends called him Chucky.
- Hi, I'm Chucky,
and I'm your friend till the end, Hidey-ho! (laughs)
(Karen laughs)
- We follow young Andy Barclay who's
a lonely kid living with a single mom.
And he wants a Good Guys doll,
'cause it's the rage in toys that year.
And Andy's mom buys that doll for Andy.
And pretty soon Andy has a new best friend,
but it's not the kind of best friend that you want.
It's more of his worst friend.
(latch clicks)
- Hi, I'm Chucky, wanna play?
(Karen screams)
(doll thuds)
- For my presentation what I had done are sketches
of what I thought Chucky would look like,
I mean in fierce form.
You know, they all have kind of like jumpers or overalls.
What I did was I took elements of childhood implements,
like a little kid's baseball bat,
things that are overall innocuous to murder.
That kind of became an important signature piece for him
for that clothing and the colors that go with that.
The My Buddy doll that Don spoke of had red hair.
- In fairy tales, the archetype of some,
you know, redheads evil,
you know, and that's partly why Chucky has red hair.
I mean, it's just, it's silly and ridiculous.
And of course, we know redheads are
the nicest people in the world,
but in fairy tales they are harbingers of evil.
- The more important part was turning
this kind of benign doll that could be seen
on the shelf at ToysRUs or something,
and what it would look like when the monster came out.
- I said talk to me, dammit,
or else I'm gonna throw you in the fire!
- You stupid bitch!
You filthy slut! (Karen screams)
- In those shots, he kind of changed from
the mop-haired guy to a bit of a receding hairline.
A lot of Jack Nicholson honestly was my inspiration
from "The Shining" for that face.
(intense, ominous orchestral music)
- I can't think of a thing to say. Fuck it.
- Chucky's very famous.
- Chucky's so famous.
Chucky's the most famous thing you've done, right?
- Yeah, but I'm nowhere near
the star Chucky is.
- I was, you know, a huge fan of his even
just starting as a kid, growing up,
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
I was a freshman at Columbia University, 18 years old,
and he was teaching an acting class there,
and I audited the acting class. (laughs)
And then he coincidentally ended up playing
this character that I created.
I didn't cast him, Tom Holland, who was the director
of the first movie, cast Brad.
- [Kyra] What was it like to switch from,
you know, acting to voice acting?
- It's the same thing, really.
You get innately into how to work with a microphone.
After a while you just kind of fall into it.
- So much of that character is the voice.
And you can tell that he seems to be having fun
as a little doll that came to life.
You know, like, okay, I'm stuck with this,
but I'm gonna have fun with it.
- It's really fun and inspiring to work with him.
The thing about Brad is he does not condescend
to this at all.
Brad like approaches this
as like, "Where is he coming from?"
I mean, he doesn't literally say,
"What is Chucky's motivation?"
But we do, we talk about it in the way
that I do with any character, any other actor.
And we're thinking, what is the subtext here?
- There's something really fun about being the villain.
That weird motivation of I want to hurt.
I don't care who I step on,
this is what I want and I'm going to,
and I'm going to get it.
There's something sort of weird
and pure about that motivation.
It's kind of fun. (laughs)
Which is even really scarier.
That's the scary part.
I mean, I think it's finding the truth in yourself
about your own emotions and feelings,
and the elements that lead you there.
You can give yourself
a million different reasons why you behave the way you do.
It's justification for you.
You find a justification in your own evil.
- Acting is intention.
And you know, all of us have a sort of
a really violent heart.
I mean we're all killers. There's no such thing as evil.
All evil is just humanity.
It's unacceptable, but it's still human.
- I think we create a scenario for ourselves
that enables us to carry out something horrible.
- You know, history is replete
with horrible acts of violence, and cruelty.
And we all are capable.
I think we like to call things evil,
because we like to pretend that we're not, but we are.
(intense, ominous music)
(Chucky laughs maniacally) (thunder crashes)
- He works at it hard,
and so that's, I really appreciate that.
- So when you're playing something like that,
you're just using that part of yourself.
You don't actually kill anybody, but you do intend to.
- [Chucky] Give me the boy and I'll let you live!
Do you hear me? Give me the boy! (screams)
- I've never been afraid of the doll,
and I'm not afraid of Brad.
- When I met Alex, he was six, I was 25.
It's just a weird context to meet some, you know,
to meet a child in a professional context
where you're colleagues.
- I don't remember much else about being six,
but I remember being in the film.
And I remember a lot of things
about making it and behind the scenes.
- He was you know, just this little like actor,
who sometimes felt like my boss in a weird way.
- I mean, being a child actor
is an interesting situation for sure.
'Cause you're given a lot of the responsibility of an adult.
- He never directed me when I was younger.
He was just the writer.
I idolized Don when I was a kid.
- In addition to being a good actor,
he's a really smart guy.
- And I was a bright kid.
I wasn't like a kid that was just like,
"Okay, get in front of the camera, Johnny, and now do this."
I had the entire script memorized.
I knew everybody's lines, all my lines,
all everybody else's lines.
- It's just so funny seeing a seven-year-old,
like "We need to go over this scene.
I don't like like this dialogue.
I don't know if this line works." (laughs)
- There's just something really funny
about a child cursing too, (laughs) that's so upsetting.
But when he's like.
- He said, Aunt Maggie was a real bitch,
and got what she deserved.
- I showed it to my boyfriend for the first time.
He was like, "Why is that kid saying that?"
I'm like, "It's not him, it's the doll!
It's Chucky. It's not his fault!"
- I had never seen anything like that.
And anytime a movie uses a kid,
I am on another level of frightened.
- By day children imagine and pretend.
By night children have the darkest of imaginations.
- That's kind of one of the cool things
about having a child actor,
like, especially in "Child's Play," you know?
Because there is that sort of innocence
and that quality of they're not putting on a front.
They're not putting on a certain demeanor.
They're just being very truthful.
- You know, the beauty and then the dark side
of what the character goes through, loss, separation.
It's an important part of childhood.
And I think that's why Don's script originally appealed
to me because here was this child
that was saying, "My doll's come to life
and has spoken to me."
- Andy stop it.
You know perfectly well that you're making this up.
- And one by one people around him start dying.
- And sometimes, especially in horror films,
I feel like that gives one of the most jarring reactions.
- That crying scene that I did in the first one,
where Andy breaks down and is scared for his life
that Chucky's coming to kill him..
- After Chucky has murdered several people,
Andy is taken to a mental institution as a suspect.
- It's like the little boy that cried wolf,
except he's telling the truth.
And it's so insane that no one would believe him
and he's separated from his mother.
- Meanwhile, Chucky is trying
to take over Andy's body and soul.
- He's locked up, but he like slides down the chair.
And he's crying, 'cause Chucky's coming after him,
and they don't believe him.
- I was so dreading that scene to begin with.
Like I was just really dreading it,
because it was a crying scene.
- I think that as a kid too, you hate crying on camera,
because you just wanna have fun.
And now as an adult, I'm like, when can I cry?
- When it finally came time to do it,
I just kind of let loose and was crying.
- Please don't leave me, please. (cries)
- I legit, am like, that poor kid.
He's about to get got.
- There are people who have said it's,
you could just kick the doll, it's not scary.
And I never understand that.
- This little toy, how scary can it be?
You could kick him over.
You could throw him across the room.
- I mean, if I walk through my house
and a doll came to life, I'd probably just have
a heart attack and die.
I mean, that's really scary.
- I think that's why audiences embrace the character,
'cause he is an underdog.
You know, he is resilient.
He can overcome his shortcomings and do the job.
(gun fires)
- I had just gotten in the Writer's Guild,
and there was a strike,
so I was not able to be on the set for "Child's Play" one.
But then when the movie was in post
and they were editing David very graciously,
'cause he didn't have to do this,
and a lot of producers wouldn't do it,
invited me into the editing room
just to see what they were doing.
And just to get my opinion for what it was worth.
- It's funny because what Don was so taken by,
and when Liz and I were in London,
and I bought that book on Victorian dollhouse murders,
there's just something in us, people
that are frightened of dolls.
And people say all the time, "I'm frightened of dolls."
- Because there's something about an inanimate object
that's like, so
no emotion, but like just a smile.
- This like frozen expression
that leaves your imagination room
to do anything and go anywhere.
- I do think that it's the idea of bringing
the effigy of human form to life, that shouldn't be.
- But that was really nice of him.
And I think it was really at that point that we bonded,
not just as colleagues, but as friends.
And you know, and then happily the movie was successful,
and they wanted to do a sequel.
- In fact, if it was a movie it would take three
or four sequels just to do it justice.
(darkly amusing tinkling children's carnival music)
(tape rattles)
(paper scrapes)
(amusing tinkly children's carnival music)
(tape rattles)
- I was so proud of the work that everybody did,
but I never dreamed there would be a sequel.
I didn't even think like that.
It was the movie we were gonna do and then move on.
- You know, and so we did two movies back
to back, basically.
- I brought Don back on the second film.
Yes, he was rewritten by John Lafia on the first film,
and then Tom Holland after that.
But he has always had a first position writer's credit
on 30 years of Chucky.
- In "Child's Play 2" Andy Barclay is sent
to live with foster parents,
played by Jenny Agutter and Gerrit Graham.
And of course they don't believe him
that this doll has been haunting him
for so much of his young life.
And they soon wind up risking Chucky's wrath.
- I've had it!
- [Andy] But you've got to kill him!
- [Joanne] Andy!
- I don't have any favorite individual memories
from that set because I was,
the entire experience was so exciting for me.
I was so unbelievably happy to be there.
- This was really the big, big production.
So I really looked up to all those people when I was a kid.
And I had a lifetime of remembering
that I looked up to them.
- He was seven and I was 24.
So while I was like a big sister to him then.
And he has since told me that I was
the person he remembers being nicest to him then.
He really felt like I was his big sister.
- Christine, for example, you know,
she really feels like my older sister.
- It's a relationship that's rarely explored
in horror movies or movies in general
is like the foster sibling relationship.
He is a little messed up from his experience,
but he has this older sibling he attaches onto real fast.
She treats him as an equal and she's like,
"Yep, life's messed up, but I'll help you out."
And she goes to bat for him. It's really nice.
- I auditioned the way everyone does.
I went to a, you know, my agent got me an appointment,
and I went and I read.
My stock and trade at the time was
the offbeat misunderstood, tough chick without a gold,
which was my stock and trade for many, many years.
And I didn't get it.
But I got an episode of "21 Jump Street"
that I went and did.
And then I came back from that.
And the day I came back from "Jumpstreet,"
I got an episode of the then "Baywatch."
And I was working and I felt really empowered.
They hadn't found the Kyle yet,
and so they decided to go back and read the girls
that had been near misses.
And I went back and I went back with attitude though.
I had a call time, I didn't have time to waste.
I had to get in and out of there,
and get my ass to the beach,
and do a whole day on "Baywatch."
My attitude shifted enormously for that second audition.
And I think that's why I got it.
That black leather hat that I'm wearing, it's my hat.
I've worn it in a ton of stuff.
I wore it in the old "90210."
I wore it in the new "90210."
I wore it in the old Chucky and the new Chucky.
It's a single most important piece
of memorabilia from my career that I have.
And it's weird 'cause I owned it before I was an actor.
- They made a big maze out of the empty Chucky boxes.
It was a lot of fun.
And I remember, you know, melting down Chucky
with that hot wax.
It wasn't really hot, but it looked hot.
- And then that last sequence
in the toy factory is just incredible.
Like that's, when you see a movie about a killer toy,
you want it to end in a toy factory.
- All those scenes were action packed parts of the film,
but also time consuming.
Because if it's more demanding of us physically,
it's most likely more demanding of Chucky,
and that means a lot of extra puppeteer work.
- It takes all nine puppeteers to work him.
We got a guy on legs, a guy on one arm,
a guy on another arm.
Three facial puppeteers working the lips,
the brows, the eyes, a puppeteer on the head and body.
(Chucky screams)
- Andy! Hurry up he's right behind you!
- [Chucky] You bastard! (groans)
- You know, this small army of technicians were needed
to bring Chucky to life.
- It's really sort of an animated movie.
You know, it's shot in live action and stuff,
but he was completely animated
just in a sort of a puppet sense.
- And Kevin rounded up some of the best of,
you know, people in the business.
- The biggest challenge, I think again, for us,
the crew was to get, and the puppeteers,
was to get the doll to walk, to give a convincing walk.
- You've been very naughty, Miss Kettlewell.
- Now I consider Kevin a friend,
but then he was just sort of like everybody there
that was above me, they were gods.
- And the puppeteering that went into bringing Chucky
to life to do the impossible, and they did it.
- In the first film we used a little person
and cut between the two.
Kevin has now made it possible
that we don't need a little person at all.
(sheet rips)
(Chucky screams)
- I was just really enamored of being there.
Especially when we first started,
the first half of the schedule was on the lot at Universal.
And it was on a stage that had, at the time,
the oldest existing set in the world.
It was the opera house from
the original "Phantom of the Opera"
which has since burned down.
But being on the Universal lot where
the Universal monsters were born,
and being a working actress is just,
you really feel like an actor.
You really feel like you're part of
that historic community when you're on one
of those old lots, they're so magical.
- Please, I was only playing.
No! (doors thud)
(ominous, aggressive piano music)
(tapes rattles)
- "Child's Play 2" and three were kind of shot back-to-back.
I think they were rushed into production.
They came out less than a year apart.
- They had Justin Whalin who I've never met to this day.
But they had him play Andy.
- No offense to Justin Whalin,
but you know, I was so attached to Alex who
is the most adorable kid.
Yeah, to have him recast.
I understand they wanted to age him up for story purposes.
- Because I was not old enough.
I was only 10 at the time.
They wanted him to be 16 and have a girlfriend,
and be in military school.
- And every project that I've ever made,
if you go through my whole filmography,
they all deal with children, whether it's "Hocus Pocus,"
whether it's "An American Tail" and a little Jewish mouse,
but they're all kids.
- When I heard that we were making a third one,
I assumed that I would be in it.
As a 10-year-old that was a bit of a tough pill to swallow.
- To Andy Barclay and Chucky, those are the projects
that I'm attracted to,
the exploration of childhood is everything to me.
To me, it forms who we are as people.
- What happens to real people in real life
when they have violence happen?
When you're a child, I mean, you would,
it would screw you up.
- Somehow I saw it though, when it came out.
And you know, I thought, yeah, okay.
Maybe I'll look like that when I'm 16. I don't know.
I think he did a fine job. The movie was fun.
The one liners were becoming a little more prominent.
- Don't fuck with the Chuck. (laughs)
- It's got, you know, really good kills in it.
- Just how sadistic it is to make
the kids kill each other, instead of him doing the work,
by replacing those paintballs
with bullets and live ammunition.
That's nuts.
- And Chucky's death scene is spectacular in that film.
(Chucky screaming)
(metal crunches)
- And then they end up killing Chucky in the end.
Or do they?
(rock music)
(tape rattles)
(rock music)
- And we begin "Bride of Chucky,"
with his ex-girlfriend, Tiffany, stitching him back together
and resurrecting him.
- [Tiffany] Ade Due Damballa
- Awake!
- When I thought of that character with "Bride of Chucky,"
I knew that, you know, it needed to be a two-hander.
(thunder crashes)
- Awake. Awake, awake, awake! (hand smacks)
- This needed to be a movie about a relationship
between these two characters.
And so the "Bride of Chucky" needed
to be very different from Chucky.
- You look like Martha Stewart with that thing.
- Who the fuck is Martha Stewart?
- My idol.
- They tried something entirely new with "Bride"
and really changed it up.
- It very much was the perfect adjustment
of changing the way Chucky was.
That those movies were into the way they needed
to be for that era.
- Introduced Tiffany who just revitalizes
the series, I think.
- You know, Chucky is kind of like
more straightforwardly blood thirsty.
Whereas Tiffany, you know, she has
some conventional wants in her life.
She wants love. She wants affection.
She wants to be understood.
- Oh, that's so romantic.
- I give them six months.
- And Tiffany is based on my friend Ronna.
Tiffany looks just like Ronna.
That's how those two came to be.
Which of course, is Jennifer Tilly.
- David Kirschner, I adore him.
He's the one that came to me at
the very beginning when I was sort of,
I was sort of like digging in my heels.
Like, I don't know if I wanna do a Chucky movie.
And I didn't know anything about Chucky movies at the time.
But he said, "I want to meet you."
He did a whole presentation.
We went to the Bel Air hotel.
He had the Chucky doll in the trunk.
He brought it out very reverentially like, this is Chucky.
Like he was introducing me to Chucky.
- I didn't know Jennifer Tilly before that,
but I had written it for her.
And then, you know, and just well of course,
that's not gonna work out,
'cause things like that rarely work out.
But then she wanted to do it.
- I think he felt like once I saw the Chucky doll,
and once I heard what Chucky was all about,
of course I would fall in love with
the whole Chucky franchise and come on board.
Which I actually did.
He did a very good job of selling me on it.
- After having done three sort
of straightforward, relatively conventional horror movies,
that we, you know, reinvented it as a comedy.
And she was a big part of that.
- When slasher series reach their burnout phase,
the creators do one of two things.
They either make the subsequent chapters comedic,
horror comedies, or they play for laughs.
Or they take their killers and put them in outer space.
So in the case of "Bride of Chucky," I was relieved
that they made it more comedic.
- I was really unprepared for, you know,
the humor and the history,
and just the really great writing and great characters.
- The Chucky films were definitely revolutionary
in introducing gay characters.
- It was important to me with these movies
to constantly appeal to that subset.
That has sort of steamrolled over the last,
since "Bride of Chucky""
is when we started making it pretty gay.
- Don is gay and he's had a lot
of really interesting sympathetic gay characters
in the franchise.
For example, the best friend in the "Bride of Chucky."
- And the Alexis Arquette character and Tiffany.
You know, Jennifer Tilly has always appealed
to a gay audience, probably dating back
to her role in "Bound."
- My favorite scene, sadly, is when I was killed.
It's when Tiffany was in the bathtub.
I thought it was so cinematic.
When I'm watching the "Bride of Frankenstein"
and I'm starting to cry,
'cause I can relate to the "Bride of Frankenstein."
And then Chucky starts walking down the hall
in his little Chucky legs.
And then he throws the TV into the bathtub.
And I'm screaming, and "Bride of Frankenstein" is screaming.
And "Bride of Frankenstein" pops up, and I go under.
(bride screaming)
(Tiffany screams)
it's just so beautifully shot.
- Just the idea that the surging electricity would cause
all these bubbles to waft.
I always just thought that's such a cool image.
- That's what's so brilliant
about Don's creation of that scene.
You have bubbles set against murder.
- It just was special to me,
because I felt like I took a step in confidence as a writer.
I didn't direct that one. I just wrote it.
And the director and cinematographer on that movie
were these amazing Chinese filmmakers,
Ronny Yu and Peter Pau.
And it's like, you would walk on the set every day,
it was just so beautiful.
- I think everybody loves the makeover that she did,
where she was just like your
a run of the mill middle class doll.
And all of a sudden she's putting on black nail polish,
and combat boots and making herself like a real badass.
- She's kind of gorg, and like kind of looks amaze.
If she was like a really cool scene girl in real life,
you know what I mean?
(Tiffany breathes smoke)
("Call Me" by Blondie)
- Barbie, eat your heart out.
- [Kevin] It's probably it's anywhere minimal seven people
but it can take up to eight or nine people per puppet.
- Very complicated coordination.
If you're dealing with just puppet alone,
puppet and puppet, it's easier.
- We did hours, and hours, and hours,
and hours of ADR on that.
- If you had the interaction with between,
you know, human actor
it has to be really figured out early on in advance
and then has to have a lot of rehearsal.
- They set up these two booths,
so when we were doing the lines we could look at each other.
It was really amazing working off of such
a great actor as him.
You know, sometimes I would improvise,
and then he gives something right back.
- She's just really funny. - She brilliant at improv.
Way, I mean, I'm not even close to.
She's in a different class.
- And what does Martha tell you do
when guests drop by for dinner
and you haven't had time to shop?
You improvise.
- Upon discovering where Charles Lee Ray's body
was buried, there's an amulet
that can restore them back to human form.
- All right, let's go.
- Oh, sure. I'll steer and you can work the pedals.
We're dolls, you dope!
- They arrange for Tiffany's neighbor to drive them there.
And they don't know that all the dolls are alive.
- Of course, they don't realize that these dolls
are committing murders along the way.
Murders which the kids themselves
are then implicated for.
- So in the process, they end up getting married.
- Chucky having a bride, Tifanny,
it sort of humanizes him a little bit.
Because now you can relate to the character.
He's not just like a homicidal little maniac.
He has a lot of problems that most men have.
You know, like a nagging girlfriend
that complains she's not getting enough sex.
- The love stuff
between Chucky and Tiffany, both as dolls,
was just so cute. (laughs)
And fun.
- But then you had sex in it, which was good.
That the "Bride of Chucky" had actually
added sex to horror.
You never, like Godzilla didn't have sex.
Frankenstein didn't jerk off.
We didn't have that, really.
We didn't have the monsters having a sex life,
where Chucky did.
- And some of the best stuff were totally improv.
"You generally wear prophylactics?"
"Tiff, I am a fucking rubber."
- [Chucky] Have I got a rubber?
- [Tiffany] Yeah.
- [Chucky] Tiff.
- What? - Look at me!
I'm all rubber!
- Brad, he was looking at me all the time,
'cause he was doing the lines.
And at the end of the movie when my character died,
I looked over there and tears were streaming down his face.
He was so sad.
And then I started crying too.
And then afterwards he said to Don,
"How come I haven't had a wife sooner?"
- And they end up having a baby.
(baby doll screeches)
(man screams)
(ominous, low bass orchestral music)
- [Kyra] So what led you to take
on Tony Gardner as head of the effects department
in "Seed" going forward?
Why was there that switch?
- Well, what happened was that Kevin Yagher had worked
with us on the first four films.
Done a great job.
His wife is Catherine Hicks who played
the mom in the first film.
All was great.
And then when we were going
to make our fifth film, Universal could
not make the deal with him.
They were just too far apart.
We were cutting our budget very far back.
- As your slasher series go on each subsequent film
makes less than the one before it.
So there's diminishing returns.
So yeah, the money men tend to slash the budget.
- And they wouldn't budge.
And they were unfair to someone
that had been really loyal and had done a great job.
- I loved what Tony Gardner brought to the series as well.
- Then there was the opportunity to meet him.
And because we had done "Hocus Pocus" together,
to call him and say, "Are you interested in doing this?
It's Chucky, you'd be taking over for Kevin."
And I think he was a little hesitant of that.
He's a loyal person and loyal to his craft.
But I said, you know,
"If it's not you it's gonna be somebody.
And you did such a great job on 'Hocus.'
Would you consider this?"
Have you ever done anything like this?"
And he said, "Well, not bring a doll to life,
but I've done plenty of other things,
bringing things to life."
So Don and I went out and met with him.
- I like working with smart people,
because they're allies when you're making it together,
as he definitely was.
- And it's been this partnership ever since.
- Chucky and the puppeteers, you all have
to like descend together into this fantasy.
We all have to go into this realm of this place
that we've created and make it believable.
- It's queued up.
(computer beeps)
- What? Oh, sorry. You were saying.
- [Director] That's a cut.
Tony, you guys happy?
- [Tony] Yeah, let's go with that.
- I find a thrill in making something
that isn't real be perceived as real to somebody else.
It was sort of an odd start for us,
because we were supposed to copy Kevin Yagher's puppets.
But we had no resources from Universal or from Kevin.
All we had to go from VHS copies of the movie.
We would freeze the VHS copy of the movie
and take stills off of the TV.
And that was our point of reference.
We had like three months to build everything.
And then we were off to Romania and right into it.
We had a whole team of puppeteers come in
from England to support us.
There were five of us from the United States,
and then another 15 people from the UK.
So we had amazing resources,
and just had a great time.
Another thing that was really fun was getting
to sort of design Glen from the ground up.
We knew he had to have sharp teeth,
because that had been established in "Bride."
But other than that we were free
to play with Glen, which was really awesome.
- And I love how Glen looks.
He looks like a Walter Keane painting,
or Margaret Keane who actually did them, gone to horror.
- It was just kind of fun, you know.
Just trying to invent who this character is.
Don had this idea that it should be
a sort of Dickensian character.
It should be like Oliver Twist.
- Don felt strongly that it would be great
to explore further the family dynamics
of including this child.
- Look, I still have the necklace you left me.
- It just seemed natural that we would evolve
into a domestic drama.
- "Seed of Chucky" I think was one
of the most bizarre experiences of my life.
It's just really bizarre to be looking at
a little tiny doll with her little eyes blinking, going,
"Miss Tilly, you can do it the easy way.
- Or the hard way.
- I was playing myself, Jennifer Tilly,
international film star.
I was playing Tiffany, a talking doll
that was my biggest fan.
And then I played Tiffany in Jennifer Tilly's body.
- Jennifer completely mocks herself in this movie
in a way that I think people will love her for.
- How come I don't ever get any of the good roles anymore?
How come nobody takes me seriously?
- Nice tits.
- Thank you.
- Yeah, I had a partner,
you know, we were arguing and smooching,
and you know, doing whatever we were doing.
You know, murdering together.
- Having a kid together.
- I knew Brad because of "Lord of the Rings."
Brad of course, is Wormtongue.
- [Kyra] Did you guys ever get to be
in the booth together when you did voiceover for "Seed"?
- Nah, it was just me.
Don had all these pictures of what everybody
was going to look like.
And then he had readings of most of
the other characters for the scene,
so I knew how they played it.
But we didn't play it together.
- So I had different voices for Tiffany.
When Tiffany was a person I had sort of like
a Marilyn Monroe-esque, like kind of,
like white trashy voice.
And then when she went into the doll,
I made it more of a tinny voice.
'Cause I figured the doll doesn't have
like really strong vocal chords.
So I made it more of a doll-like voice.
- Yes, he is.
- Joan, will you please stop doing that?
- Doing what?
- Imitating me. I do not sound like that!
- Oh yes you do.
- And then when she went into Jennifer Tilly,
I sort of had to do a little bit of the doll,
a little bit of the human Tiffany
in Jennifer Tilly's voice.
- All right, Fulvia, if that's what you want.
- And then we wanted the difference
between Glen and Glenda.
Glen's a sort of more proper English.
- I saw you on the telly.
- And then Glenda's a bit more, kind of cockney.
- That's my name. Don't you wear it out.
- I especially love Billy Boyd's rendition
of those characters.
- Stop it, Mommy. You'll wrinkle me dress.
- Stop it, Mommy. You'll wrinkle my dress.
- I love him, and I love Glen and Glenda.
But a feel an affection for them,
because they're my children.
You never stop loving your children.
- Glen's cute, he would be in a punk rock bar.
You know, he looks like a kind of boy I'd date. (laughs)
- I really love Glen.
I think he's really funny.
But I also find him poignant in a way.
And when we were making the movie,
there were times where we like,
oh, this is kind of sad.
You remember when Glen kills Chucky,
and he chops him up and he's just devastated.
And he's crying.
And Jennifer Tilly is like comforting him.
We're all kind of like getting a little like
oh, this is sad.
But people didn't respond correctly at first. (laughs)
- Glen/Glenda was the first trans kid,
doll trans kid, that was ever portrayed in the movies.
- It's maybe one of the greatest things
about "Seed" I think, is this kind of transgender,
you know, confused.
- Sometimes I feel like a boy.
Sometimes I feel like a girl.
- And his parents don't help.
It's a big, parent's please help.
- In my mission to make the franchise gayer and gayer,
we address this in a movie that maybe like
the audience wasn't ready for.
- I don't think "Seed of Chucky" was rejected
because of those themes.
I think the film was embraced
by that niche part of the audience.
- Now, people are more interested in that.
- Don, in a strange way through the Chucky movies
he sort of educates.
And makes people feel compassion for people
that are not like themselves.
- Partly you're like, write what you know.
But I also, there's just a part of me
that it amused me.
The idea of like kind of turning what had become
a cultural icon on its head,
and making the franchise be almost like an ambassador
for like gay horror fans.
- Gay people have always embraced horror films,
because they've always been able to relate to the monster.
The Frankenstein monster who's being persecuted
and aren't getting a fair shake.
That's probably why they gravitate towards horror films,
'cause they see themselves in some of these characters.
- I think gay people always liked horror movies,
'cause they're drama queens. (laughs)
- I think perhaps it was rejected more for the fact
that so much of it was played for laughs,
and it was jokey and silly.
- These films have really evolved
from being a really frightening first film,
to moving much more into the area
of being horror comedies.
- The film was a little too far over the top
in terms of the humor and
the outrageousness of the storyline.
- This one sort of took it all one step further.
I don't know, it's sort of spoofing on top of spoofing.
- You can catch their movie in theaters next Halloween.
Thank you, Chucky.
- Fuck you very much.
- I think that was a little too much for horror fans
who just go to see a movie for blood and guts.
Horror fans really want their scares and their gore.
And even though the film definitely had its gore moments,
some really grotesque death scenes.
- [Kyra] What is one of your favorite death scenes?
- Glen accidentally kills, uh...
- [Kyra] Are talking about with the acid?
- Yeah.
- [Kyra] John Waters.
- John Waters. I liked that, 'cause it was accidental.
He didn't mean it.
- You know, he loved the Chucky movies,
and he always wanted to be a victim of Chucky.
You should ask him about that.
- Well, I wanted to, yes.
So I was thrilled to be injured
and thrown acid in my face, even better.
(ominous music)
(glass shatters)
(Pete screams)
- But the first day I remembered,
the first take was Chucky was coming at me.
He moves, it's actually not like
they put that in later and his mouth opens
and you hear what he says.
So he's coming at me,
and then they say cut.
And you know, he falls down.
Then all of a sudden he looks up at me
and goes, "Fuck you."
It was the puppeteers working him,
which really made me laugh.
- In "Seed of Chucky" Guy Louthan played Don Mancini.
So if you look at the credits in "Seed of Chucky,"
it says, Don Mancini played by Guy Louthan,
who was the producer.
And I really felt like Don should play Guy Louthan.
Play the actual producer in the movie,
or play somebody else.
But he didn't want to do it.
- Just Tony playing himself.
And then the puppets getting revenge on the puppeteer.
(strings scrape)
(blood squishes)
(ominous music)
- Yeah, I think the audience might have felt
that Don was being a little too clever,
and a little too in-jokey for their own taste.
- It would have been absolutely de rigueur
for the people in charge to say like,
"Okay, it's time to get some new blood
(laughs) in here now,
'cause that didn't work out so well."
But David didn't he stayed loyal to me.
- He works so hard, he cares so much.
I've never worked with a director
that does not lose his cool.
- You're under a clock, and how are we gonna do this?
And it's kind of constantly traumatic.
But that's a bonding experience.
- So there is very much a wonderful, familial flavor to it.
- You get really close.
I mean, you're literally close.
You're sandwiched under a desk,
or working side-by-side, or on top of somebody.
And you have to really find a collective mindset
to make the character work.
I mean, if somebody's doing the eyes,
and someone else is doing the head,
the eyes have to lead the head movement,
And usually there's a blink in there,
and that's somebody else.
And if he's reacting to something,
a brow needs to go up while he's turning.
- What gives over here yet?
Are we through here yet?
Give us us a bit of the nasty thing,
then I want him to relax.
- [Puppeteer] Yeah.
- And then when he does the turn to his left
lead with the left brow
going up along with the turn.
- If each one of those is a different person
and you're trying to think as one character,
you either get in sync really quick, or it doesn't work.
- Oh shit.
(thunder crashes)
(intense, low bass ominous orchestral music)
- With every new rebirth
of a film Chucky's look changes a little bit.
In the first two films, Chucky was possessed
by Charles Lee Ray, I mean he still is.
But he was progressively turning human,
which is for one reason or another
not the case anymore.
You know, there's a lot of Chucky purists as I say
that would say, "Oh, I hate the way Chucky looks.
I wish he looked like he did in the first film."
But if you follow the story that wouldn't make sense.
- I watched the doll, but not, of course,
I can't have a scene with the doll.
You know, it was great to be finally able to be there,
and be around and watch.
- Today, will be the first time I've ever seen Chucky
in the plastic version work.
(tinny piano music)
(moves to dramatic, bass percussion and ominous music)
(metal clinks)
- In "Curse of Chucky," it's like a refresh
even though it's continuing the same storyline,
you get the whole new cast of characters,
primarily Nica, who's played by Fiona Dourif,
Brad Dourif's daughter,
which is really fun and interesting.
- And we don't get to work with Brad all that often.
All his stuff is done ahead of time.
So he's kind of on the periphery.
Although, when we did "Curse of Chucky,"
he was on set everyday that Fiona was working.
And he was there as like the proud dad.
- He's been like interjecting embarrassing stories
from my childhood. - Yeah.
- You know, median's with- - The press junket
will be fun.
(Fiona laughs)
- And we kind of bonded as parents.
Which is funny, 'cause then I go to work
and I listen to his voice coming out
of this doll while we're trying to stab Fiona.
(Chucky screams)
(wood crashes)
(ominous music)
- I like that Nica is a person who is in a wheelchair.
You don't see that depicted often in horror movies,
especially not as the primary hero.
- When I was cast in the first one,
I was nervous that I wasn't gonna take it seriously.
Because on set, you know,
there's this moving, walking puppet,
and they play my dad's voice.
And I was like, "I think you guys
are just gonna have to say it, say the words."
Because he sounds like my dad.
- One quick, decisive motion.
'Cause he's like fallen and now he's looking right
back up at Nica.
- Don said no, he said that he wanted it
to be the recording.
And it actually really helped,
'cause there was something so unnerving about it.
- I'm gonna kill you slow.
(Nica laughs)
- But having my dad's voice was helpful, ultimately.
It was, really creepy.
- Thank you.
- Ugh.
- When we started off it was 30 years ago, and
Fiona was, you know, like a year old, or something.
- Here's five-year-old Fiona,
and there's 12-year-old Fiona.
And she doesn't remember any of this.
But there were certain events
and screenings where I would see her.
And then she grew up, and she became an actress.
She came in on "Curse" and she read for
the role of the bitchy older sister.
And she was really good.
But I was looking at her and was like,
"I actually think she'd be really good as the lead."
And it's just like, wow that just would be
an odd thing to find the lead in our backyard.
You know the daughter of the guy who plays Chucky.
- Fans have been asking for really wanting
a return to the kind of straightforward,
legitimately scary tone that we had
in the first couple of movies.
- Well Don Mancini did a very clever thing.
Was when his budget got slashed so drastically
when it came to doing "Curse of Chucky,"
and "Cult of Chucky."
Did what a lot of low budget filmmakers do
is set their movies in one location.
You're able to tell a very claustrophobic story.
- When you're filming usually on a limited budget
in one or two locations,
it often gives you bumpers.
You got to find it in there, you can't find it out there.
You can't find it up there.
You got to find it right in here.
When we did "Insidious" it was all in one location.
Being in a house is especially claustrophobic.
You're in this space and what's going on is
it's walking down the hallway, it's in the window.
It's not on the streets, it's in your house.
But it's all here, it's all on top of you.
And when horror is on top of you, it's really scary.
- What happened to all horror it seemed like at first
it was scary, then it went so ugly,
like it got like torture porn.
And then it got funny.
And then it got to be ridiculous
that it wasn't funny anymore.
- By Scream 3 it felt like they knew
they were in a horror movie.
It almost started to fell like a "Scary Movie"
which was coming out at the same time.
(eerie music)
- Oh, shit.
- And then you had to go back to still being scary.
- That's one of the reasons why I think he went
for the more scare approach than,
you know, "Seed, and "Bride,"
because he was working with less money.
It needed to be scary to really win people over.
- I mean we're trying to bring Chucky back
to being a very sinister and very sick, scary entity.
(Chucky screams)
(girl screams)
(body thuds)
- This is the first time I've actually physically been
on a set with him and directed him.
Now, of course, it's more fun to bring his daughter
into the series as this particular movie's star.
- Don Mancini told me when he cast you he said,
"You know, the thing about Fiona is,
and the reason why is she actually looks like somebody
who this could really happen to.
- But then we had her come back in and read for Nica,
and she was really great.
- She had to audition quite a few times.
How many times did you have to audition for Chucky?
- [Fiona] Three times.
- Three times, then she had
to audition three times for that.
So she got it because she earned it.
- There's a new person coming in playing the lead.
How's this dynamic gonna shift?
And is she gonna be a team player?
She's more than a team player.
She's literally part of the group,
and you feel like she's been there since the beginning,
because she gets it, and she gets how it works.
And to help us get what we need,
because the puppet's eyes can really only turn
this far to the right, so she'll adjust.
And she just had it from the very beginning.
- Also, for whatever reason she has this incredible ability
to register trauma and pain.
- In order for the actors to truly believe they're
in danger, whatever it may be,
there's a level of bringing the audience in to
almost forget that they're in danger,
or you're in danger in the next moment.
- I mean, fear is such an interesting emotion.
And the elements that add up to fear, real fear,
cross that line obviously, between being imaginary
and something really happening to you.
- I think it's an incredible genre.
He stakes are higher than in, you know,
like a typical drama or comedy.
The stakes are higher in a different way.
The world that you create is one
that you have to live in your mind in different way.
- Your body doesn't know you're pretending.
When you're frightened in a film,
or if you put yourself there, weird things happen.
I mean, you start sweating, your hands get cold.
Often, for me, it's always crying.
- But in crying scenes
there is like no veil to cover you.
Even in real life, like, sometimes those cries
that you just can't stop,
when they get captured on camera,
it's almost like a glimpse into your real soul.
- The real-er you are the better.
Bring your emotions, bringing your timing,
bring your realness to it, bring your truth.
- It almost sounds sadistic that I need to like,
I want to see you register this kind of pain
that I've seen you do in real life. (laughs)
Because I'm your friend now,
and I saw you go through this horrible experience.
Let's use that in the movie.
- It has sometimes there's been moments
that have taken me into places I almost didn't want
to go, but I went anyway.
Because there's that little part of you going,
this is important, this is happening.
Go, go, go, go, go.
And I won't censor myself.
- Which I think makes a great actor I think when you do that
you're communicating with the people who are watching.
- Stuff that you experience in real life,
you go, we'll we can use that as fodder in the next film.
And I want to take the character that you play
in the Chucky franchise to that place
that I know that you're able to go.
But people haven't seen you go there before.
She's a great friend,
and just a really inspiring collaborator.
(eerie tinny piano music)
(moves to dramatic ominous orchestral music)
- When you work on a Chucky film you have the task
of doing the same thing over and over again
until the doll does what he's supposed
to do perfectly right.
Simple things take awhile.
- If people had more of an idea of what went
into animating a movie,
or for that matter, animating Chucky. (laughs)
I think people would have
a much bigger reverence for those kind of movies.
Because it's this whole other level of complication.
- It's not just us doing the animatronic puppet
and making it come alive, and everything works.
We have to work with Fiona,
and Don has to work with us to find an angle
that makes the limitations of the puppeteers,
or the fact that he can't do certain things work.
So we really have to connect,
and we have to work as a team to just get a shot.
(Nica screams) (Chucky screams)
(knife scrapes) (Nica screams)
(Nica breathes heavily)
- You have to focus on the moving, the moving puppet,
and block out all of the people around him
that are having like rods up his ass and stuff.
- Oh, dear!
- You don't get a chance to be like,
"Well, I'll do one this way,
and then I'll do one that way."
Because once Chucky does the right thing
and we've already spent 30 minutes on it,
you know we gotta move on.
- When you have a character that's not a human being
that you can't just say, "Oh now,
let's try it over here."
When you have to plan that stuff out that specifically,
just so you know where he's gonna be looking,
what his action is gonna be,
'cause it may take several to get that action done.
- So I think if it was any other sort of series,
I think there would be a bit more of a disconnect
between all of the people involved.
Because you'd all have your little piece of the puzzle,
and it would all plug in.
Here, we all have to plug in
just to get each shot and make it work.
- You're the last one standing, so to speak. (laughs)
- Yeah, when you're acting with Chucky, Chucky's a figure
that is walking, and talking and moving,
which it makes it easier than acting to an X.
- So you never actually killed Andy Barclay, did you?
- I was really excited and happy when I got
the call from Don for "Curse."
He told me, "I'm trying to write something in for you.
I got to get it approved by the studio.
I don't want you to get your hopes up."
- It was like a test to see how that would go.
- And so I read it, and I loved the scene
that he had for Andy.
I thought it was fun.
I got to get a little bit of revenge
and shoot him with a shotgun.
(shotgun fires)
- The fan response was really positive.
- And they were really excited to see me in that scene.
- And he did really well.
It's a nice group of all of us players
that have worked together on these.
- You know one of the reasons I like to keep
a lot of the same people around,
because you know you work well together.
- Well, it was like having a reparatory group.
You don't even have to talk barely.
You're one step ahead 'cause you know how everybody thinks,
and what's their strong points, their weak points.
- It because a shorthand.
You realize when you're filming movies
time is your best friend and your worst enemy.
Everything's a shot, I'm fighting the sun,
I'm fighting the light.
You're always fighting something in the movies.
- And you know you're gonna be working
these long hours under intense conditions.
- There's a book, "Good to Great"
and it says put good people on the bus with you,
so no matter what direction you go in,
that you know your team of people on that bus,
that they're just down ass people.
- You're forced to be in environment
with the same people.
And you really have no other choice but to make these bonds.
- There's something about creating something,
a piece of art with somebody,
that somehow bonds you in a really cool way.
- But when the circumstances are particularly challenging
then you kind of bond even more like we did on "Cult."
You know, we were shooting in blizzards,
in 40 degree below temperatures. (chuckles)
(intense, dramatic brass orchestral music)
- [Director] Here we go, and action.
And he goes back to being dead, very good.
And cut!
- We were in Winnipeg in the winter.
It was like negative 42 when we arrived,
and it didn't even matter.
- We were literally joined at the hip
through the whole production process.
Because there isn't a day where Chucky doesn't work.
But we know each other and there's a shorthand,
and we compliment each other really well.
Everything's great. Look!
(crew member laughs)
- You're basically climbing mountain together.
And you have to have each other's back.
And you know you can't do it alone.
And if you are successful in scaling the mountain together,
you sort of like, oh my god, we're awesome together.
- [Director] Drill.
(drill whirs)
- Don's gotten so confident in his story telling
he's starting to experiment now,
with the visual side of it a lot more.
- It's very deliberately surreal,
and kind of trippy.
Because you're dealing with people who are insane.
- Four years after "Curse" continuing
that storyline with Nica in a mental institute,
and you got a fun cast of characters there
with the people inside of it.
- They have schizophrenia, or whatever it is.
You have people on drugs.
You have people getting hypnotized.
You have dream sequences.
- It plays a lot with roles.
So it's like role playing,
and who's crazy, and who's not crazy?
- Part of what we wanted to do was like
a new genre, a new feel, a new aesthetic.
- It's all very monochromatic,
and then Chucky walks in and he's all bright stripes,
and he stands out.
- So the red hair and blood really pops.
(ominous music)
- The "Child's Play" franchise is a little unusual
in horror franchises, that I think it's kind of
a gateway drug to horror for a lot of children.
For obvious reasons, 'cause it's a doll.
And so they key in to that.
But so Andy was their hero,
and so they've all grown up.
And now, they're vaguely disaffected 20 somethings. (laughs)
They're like, "Andy's got to come back."
So the challenge was to bring Andy back into the story,
but in a way that would surprise them.
- And I think it was really fun,
as an actor, to reprise a role,
that has been a topic in my life since I was six-years-old.
And now, I get to put some life into what Andy
would be like had he survived that childhood.
- And you would have aspects of PTSD.
And how would that manifest in your life as a 30-something?
- He has clearly struggled with
the effects that Chucky has had on his life,
and his inability to move past it
with others in a relationship.
And probably even within himself.
So the way we left it from "Curse of Chucky"
I think Andy torturing this doll for the past four years
is the perfect route that Andy should have gone.
(Chucky screams)
- This was the first time that I had ever done something
that was written for me.
I just had way more confidence.
I was like way more relaxed.
It just made it so much more fun.
- In the "Cult of Chucky"
there was an actor that I slit his throat
in "Curse of Chucky".
And he was playing a totally
different character, Adam Hurtig.
- Well, "Curse of Chucky" was kind of
a formative film experience for me.
I was super intimated to not only work with Don,
but to work with Fiona, as well.
Not only did I come in later on during
the filming process, but I also have to die on camera.
And Jennifer Tilly had to kill me. So no pressure.
- And when we went to Toronto, Don goes,
"Jennifer this actor," 'cause I didn't met him on the set,
'cause I didn't have any scenes with him.
He goes, "This actor that's in the Q&A,
you worked with him before."
I go, "No, I didn't."
- How is it to be forgotten by Jennifer Tilly?
Humbling. Whew.
- He goes, "Yes, in 'Curse of Chucky' you slit his throat."
- [Director] Action.
And fall.
(ominous music)
- (gasps) Aw.
- But it was fun to see her face
when she actually did remember me.
- And I do remember I slit his throat.
And I remember he was such a good sport.
- Oh, wait.
Oh! And it was this nice, kind of like,
"Yeah, I'm back."
- Wait a minute, there's two of them?
- It was this cool idea that Don was having me
come back as a different character.
- You're sick.
And not in the fun way like me.
- And I got a chance to really riff with Don
to see what it was like to create
this character with multiple personas.
- You're Mark Zuckerberg, now.
- Yeah.
- Okay.
- I just think that's so interesting
that Don just rehires people to play another character.
It's like, "Oh you were the cop in the last one,
but you can be this psycho in this one.
No one's gonna notice."
- Just kind of makes you wonder who's next.
- It was fun to come back for "Cult."
Don actually asked me to come back
for "Curse" at one point.
Though I think the character there he was considering
having me do was Fiona's mom.
And I'm glad it didn't work out,
because I'm really happy to have come back as Kyle.
It's a character that I am fond of.
That part of my life is something
I'm super nostalgic about.
- Andy sent me.
We're gonna have some fun.
- I like "Cult" a lot.
I think "Cult" is shot beautifully.
I'm a fan to the multiple Chuckys.
- And I know that that was an idea
that Don had wanted to do way back with "Child's Play 3."
So it's great to see that finally realized,
and I think it came off great.
- I think they're all cute.
Like I love scene where all three
of the Chuckys are talking to each other.
And you have the one armed Chucky
that's sort of a bad ass,
and you have the innocent Chucky.
I just think that he's really, really cute.
- I never felt so alive!
- Yeah, well, you've been alive
for like two minutes. (laughs)
- I think it's important to keep him practical.
I wish there was more money for it,
but I'm glad it's still practical.
- Yeah, we can't do CGI with Chucky,
because it would take away that pure element.
- Fans have made a point of saying they don't want
to see CGI with Chucky.
They really, really want a doll
that doesn't move in perfect form.
As brilliant as Tony Gardner is in bringing him to life,
there is still an element that it's a doll,
and the movements are different than human movements.
And I think in there is what makes it frightening.
I think if it was perfect fluid form,
I don't think it would be as frightening.
- When they just make it digital it loses,
you know, definitely loses something.
- The eye and the brain could make that distinction
between computer generated and rubber.
And rubber's just, it's just so much more effective
most of the time.
- When we're lucky enough to have practical effects,
it's a win-win for everybody, for the actor.
- Especially when the actors are interacting with it.
- You're living through something
which your body is experiencing.
And for the viewer, they're living through
what you're living through,
because you're living through it,
and you're presenting it to them.
- I think it was such an incredible experience
to use practical effects.
In "Bad Hair," the hair wraps around my ankle.
It pulls you and then when I came in,
I had to like cut the hair,
and all this blood shoots out.
- People just act differently
when they have blood gushing everywhere.
And they can actually see it,
and it's actually something tangible.
- It heightened the performance
because I had this contraption around me.
I had this blood that's about to spew all over.
- It enhances the whole reality of the film.
It's not pretend, it's real.
- All of us got pulled into this world
in a very real and grounded way,
that we may not have been able to be pulled into,
had it all been VFX.
- Your imagination doesn't have to work nearly as hard
with a killer doll than with a ping pong ball.
- It's hard when you're just in front of a green screen
and it's like, "Now imagine that you're guts
are being torn out of your body."
Cool, how do I imagine that?
But if you see yourself in it,
you almost get that feeling already.
- When you put all of that together
it's like magic, you get to play.
- And there's something so powerful about that,
because you're not imagining something,
you are really experiencing something together.
- So I think that Chucky is physical,
it really, really helps the world.
- Chucky's a doll.
So that when he walks around and you see it,
it looks like Chucky. You know,
it looks like the real thing.
So you watch the scene and the scene is real.
- He feels so real in those movies,
because it was all practical,
and you actually see the light bouncing off.
And it feels, you can tell the difference
between the CG Yoda, and the Yoda
from "Empire Strikes Back."
- You got to buy into it.
And when it's a practical thing that looks real,
that helps you buy into it.
- I think at least having something there
as sort of a marker, really, really helps
the acting process, just from an actor's standpoint.
- [Kyra] Yeah.
- And it saves money.
- I find that it's financially, it's a saving grace.
- [Tony] When we did the last two films
that were direct to video,
the budget was substantially lower.
The budget for the whole movie
was Kevin Yagher's budget for building
the puppets for the first film.
- They want it to be more.
They want it to be cheaper and have bigger stars,
and cost more and music, and everything.
It's always like that.
- [Tony] And there were only three puppeteers allowed
to go up from the United States, including myself.
So I couldn't be behind the monitor watching,
I had to focus on performance, as well.
But we also lucked into some local people
that really rose to the occasion,
and were really great, and did an amazing job.
It would have been nice to have had time
to rehearse prior to shooting.
(crew members laughing)
But we dove in and we were rehearsing
while we were shooting.
And given the resources and the time,
I think everybody did a really amazing job.
(urgent, aggressive ominous full orchestral music)
(flowing, eerily enchanting orchestral strings music)
(aggressively dangerous dramatic full orchestral music)
(flowing, eerily enchanting orchestral strings music)
(thunder crashes)
(flowing, eerily enchanting orchestral strings music)
- And then the challenge was to bring all
of these characters from different aspects of the franchise,
and put them on collision courses,
and see what happens.
- That's the thing about the franchise is,
it's able to introduce brand new elements,
and then weave them in seamlessly.
And then they're just a part of the franchise.
So by the time you see in "Cult of Chucky" Nica
talking to Tiffany, it's like, oh yeah that makes sense.
- What happens when Andy Barclay
and Nica Pierce come together?
- And Fiona is such a great actress, first of all.
She is inspiringly good.
I really wish that we got to do more together
than the one scene that we had.
But the one scene that we had was like
the highlight of it for me.
Because I was really looking forward to working with her.
- I just think it's more
interesting to play the "bad guy".
- I'm done.
- You're done?
Yeah, that's interesting. - I'm done.
I'm not doing them anymore.
- I don't want to play the victim anymore.
- [Kyra] You guys should just reverse.
- We are. - We are.
(laughs) We are.
(Nica laughing maniacally) (Chucky laughs maniacally)
- You have Tiffany, who's inhabiting Jennifer Tilly's body.
You have Fiona, which is really genius,
inhabiting Chucky's body,
and you know Chucky is her dad, Brad Dourif.
So she's basically playing Brad.
- This last movie I was just Like,
how did this happen?
How am I the lead of this movie? (chuckles)
- She becomes Chucky, ah, so brilliant.
That soul of Chucky is in her.
- It would be almost offensive
for anybody else to be possessed
by Chucky, except for Fiona.
Even with something weird, incestuous and gross
about that you could think,
it doesn't feel that way at all. (laughs)
It feels really organic
and I like it.
- [Kyra] Like it should be that way.
- Yes. - Yeah.
- Somebody else doing Brad would be sacrilage.
- It's kind of weird, because like there's
a young female version of a guy you knew.
Well, that's Fiona.
- She is such a brilliant actress.
And I saw her walking out there, I saw Brad.
And it's weird, 'cause I've never actually acted
with the real Brad.
I mean, off screen of course, doing the voice overs.
But when she was walking towards me,
I mean it was really, really sexy.
She really sort of morphed into Brad.
- It was just like a cacophony
of all of these emotions going into doing it.
That I would have a chance to play this thing
that my dad is famous for doing.
- I felt a little bit bad for Fiona,
because when Don was like, "Quick, quick,"
I would be like lunge at her,
and our teeth would clatter.
- I would get her lipstick all over me.
And so we couldn't just go again,
'cause there was a big makeup reset each time. (laughs)
- Then she'd pull away and I'd see she had lipstick
all over her face. (laughs)
And I said to her, "Fiona when Entertainment Tonight asks
if I'm a good kisser,
will you just please lie and say yes?"
- It was really fun working with Jennifer.
I had wanted to my whole life.
I think it was intimidating
'cause she's so funny.
- I would like to kiss Fiona in a controlled environment,
because I want to redeem myself.
- Making this movie was so fun.
It was like surreal fun.
I just had a ball.
You can ask your dad.
We were all kind of laughing the whole time.
- [Kyra] Meanwhile my dad is on the floor.
Your dad is always in the corner on the floor. (laughs)
- [Tony] Those are her eye lines.
- Yeah. (Fiona laughs loudly)
- [Kyra] By now, I may as well introduce myself
as Tony's daughter, and the filmmaker.
I set out to meet all these people surrounding the franchise
whose names had been a big part of my childhood,
but I never had the chance to meet.
I haven't officially met everybody
who's worked on the Chucky movies.
But I feel like I've known Brad my whole life.
Like you have, it's so surreal meeting you now,
because you've been a part of my childhood
since I was practically born.
But I'd never met you 'til now,
but you've killed my dad before.
And the only-
- [Tony] And see I never think of that.
There's all these weird layers of all that.
- [Kyra] Like everybody who've I've
been interviewing for this is like
in one way or another been a part
of how I've grown up.
- That's interesting.
- [Kyra] Chucky's been so at the helm
of my family I think.
So it's like kind of-
- You were how old when it came into your life?
- You were a little one.
You were like three-years-old, four-years-old.
- So you literally grew up with somebody,
like you grew up with them in the family.
- I view him as a little brother.
Because I'm the youngest,
I always wanted a little sibling.
I thought it was very interesting
that Fiona and I both share growing up
with this doll, but in different aspects
of her dad was an actor, and mine was the head puppeteer.
- I was maybe six or five?
- You were young.
- [Fiona] I was young.
- Still a baby.
- I remember seeing him in the voiceover booth,
and he was like, screaming like he
was being burned alive.
Which I guess he was in the movie. (chuckles)
And I ran and hid under a desk?
- Yeah, you ran, no ran out of the thing
into the parking lot.
- You start screaming and crying.
You run back upstairs into your bedroom,
and hopped on your bed crying hysterically.
Telling everybody that you weren't gonna go downstairs,
because the "bad people" came.
The bad people were here.
And I look and there's Tiffany
and Chucky sitting on our coach.
- And poor little thing came in
and heard her daddy dying.
- (laughs) I did.
- Being burned to death, and freaked out.
(Chucky screaming)
- I was so mad at him for leaving the dolls out.
'Cause you were just absolutely traumatized.
- I've been in a theater and watched my dad (laughs)
watched his head explode in a microwave,
or whatever, over and over again.
And I don't like it.
And I still don't like to watch him die.
- [Kyra] I feel like that something,
'cause my dad dies in one of the movies.
- [Fiona] (laughs) Yeah, that's right.
- [Kyra] So I feel like we have
this mutual understanding of what it's like
to watch our parents die.
- To watch our parents die, yeah.
- I love the scene where your dad gets decapitated, (laughs)
in "Seed of Chucky," that was hilarious.
But I also loved the doll's reaction to it.
You know, they get spattered by his blood
and they're all turned on. (laughs)
- [Kyra] I watched that
when I was eight by the way. (laughs)
- Did that traumatize you?
- Yes. (Laughs) (both laughs)
- But didn't he show you the head and you know,
just like, "See this is like?"
- [Kyra] No.
And my only knowledge of you growing up
was that you kissed my dad's decapitated head.
- I know, isn't that gross? That's so gross.
I would have kissed his regular head, too.
- [Kyra] Due to these types of movies filming
so far away, they basically formed second families
while away from their real ones.
- Not only do we play with dolls,
but we made our living playing with dolls.
- [Kyra] So it always felt there was a piece missing,
and I had to meet my second family.
Like it wasn't complete until I met everybody.
- And feel this.
I mean you've grown up with this stuff but-
- Oh wow. - It's nothing.
- It's light. - it's a fake ax.
- For me it's kind of cool
that you're doing this documentary,
because for me I have my two families that get to meet.
'Cause these are the people I go to work
with and have fun with,
and think of it as extended family.
And for you guys to all meet up and actually make
that family unit, and that family dynamic larger,
is kind of cool.
- You know, all of us were like a family.
I would say a mostly functional family,
occasionally dysfunctional as all.
- You know, you work really long hours,
and it feels like camp.
- Going off to Chucky camp, as my wife and I call it.
- You can't do anything else
besides work with these people and make this thing.
- Given that the films are in Canada, or Romania,
and they're never here, I definitely don't look forward
to the time gone.
- Being away from
home was horrible.
My wife and I met when we were 16,
on an archeological dig in the Negev Desert
between Jordan and Israel, and we're inseparable.
And I would be away for two,
maybe three weeks at a time,
then I would fly home for a weekend and then go back.
It was very difficult.
- You're going somewhere where it's a different time zone,
so you're not gonna be able to be plugged in
just on the most basic routine.
- I mean there was no Skyping, or anything else,
so a lot of phone calls.
- Not much films in LA these days,
so you're always off somewhere.
- It's a job that takes you physically
to different places a lot.
And it's really time consuming when you're working.
- I remember they were off to Romania,
and then Don told me afterwards there
was like terrible weather and stuff.
It sounded like a real adventure.
And that's the bad thing about doing a voice
is you just miss all that, you know.
- Sometimes it was just goddam lonely
in doing some of those films.
I mean, I would be in this huge room,
I mean a massive room.
They could put an orchestra in there.
And I had a mic.
And everybody was sitting in
the sound booth way far away.
- 'Cause everyone just thinks,
oh you spent all that time together.
No, I was just in a box with a mic.
- And I just did dialogue by myself all day.
And thank god when Jennifer finally came.
- Well, I suppose it's sort of changed for me
since I've had a family.
You know, that is now part of the decision making process.
- The first Chucky, the kids were somewhere
between five and eight, the two of them.
And it was difficult, it was difficult for everybody.
'Cause I was a father that until that point
had been there for everything.
- It doesn't bode well as far as, you know,
being able to do your job well,
and be a parent well at the same time.
One kind of gets put by the wayside.
- And you work a 15 or 17 hour day,
and then you go home and you crash for a few hours,
and then you have to come back and do it again.
- But it's not a nine to five.
It is a whatever time we would like you to come in,
and whatever time we would like you to leave.
- When you're filming a movie, you're going to war.
I don't want to make it sound like that,
'cause you're not killing people,
but you're killing yourself.
- It's just not normal in the way that it normally is.
I mean people go to work and they come home,
and then they're home.
- So the time that you put,
when I did "Sextupets" I worked 22 hour days.
Literally, out of a 70, 65-day shoot.
I was there probably 22 hours at least 50 times.
- I was working from 8:00 in the morning
'til 11:00 at night, five days a week.
And then also working on the weekends
when I could have time.
And I had a newborn baby at home.
- [Brad] You know when I came home it was very late.
I had to get up early.
- [Fiona] Or you'd just be gone for-
- Or I'd be gone for weeks, or months.
- Every single person is dedicating their lives
for the next two weeks, seven weeks, or six months.
- With "Lord of the Rings" it was a year and a half.
"Master and Commander" was six months.
- Once you're committed to the film
you're at their disposal.
- If they said that now, I'd be like,
"Well, can my family come and visit?
And how would that work?"
So it's part of the process.
- The second season of "Phineas"
I had to really put my foot down
about hiring new people,
and building the budget of the show,
because I didn't want to miss my daughter growing up.
- But it's the life that we've chosen,
you know, it's nomadic.
- But if I had not had a kid in the mix,
I might have continued to work that hard.
- You know, that's why I see why people thank
their children and their families
when they win awards.
Yeah, I'm able to provide for guys
with my passion, and my art, and my hard work.
But when you get those statues its like time
to sit there and go, "Thank you.
Thank you guys for being understanding.
'Cause honestly without you I couldn't do this."
- It's hard, it's an interesting question.
No one's every asked me that.
No one's ever cared. That's so nice.
- [Kyra] I care 'cause my dad would have to go.
- Of course, I know right when you asked that question,
I just thought that's such an interesting perspective.
- [Kyra] My father and I are basically like best friends.
(game thudding) - [Tony] Yay!
- Can I have a share for your camera? Can we share?
- [Tony] Take yours.
(button clicks)
- Do it again.
Hi Daddy.
- Hey you.
- I can feel comfortable talking
about anything with him.
He's kind of a rock.
I admire him a lot.
- It really sucks when you're gone
and it's your kid's birthday and you can't be there.
That's the time you want to be there the most,
and then you're stuck, you know,
in some hotel room somewhere waiting
for the alarm to go off so you can go stick
a knife in Fiona's leg.
Those two worlds don't mix very well.
I don't know how to put it.
- [Kyra] As a six, seven, eight-year-old
you have your other half so to speak, leave
on a plane for this movie,
you kind of have like a little spark taken out of you.
- Part of it too is knowing that you guys
aren't gonna be home forever.
And it's like you want to get,
you want to be there for everything,
'cause time just moves so fast.
- I think he probably missed out
on a lot of key moments that
we probably both wish we had.
- As a parent you feel like you miss everything.
I mean, part of the
fun of being
a parent is the family dynamic.
You know, listening to all three of you kids laugh,
to me, is like the best thing ever.
(child squeals)
So you go away and you don't have that.
And then you're working shitty hours.
And then it's an eight hour time difference.
And you're completely on your own.
And it's like you have to remind yourself
that you're there to be able
to provide for your family,
but at the same time it's taking away from your family.
So it just kind of really sucks.
- I'm sorry. Gosh. (Tony laughs)
- There's some honesty for you.
- It's so hard to make any movie.
Even the worst movie ever made
is still hard to make, and people go through a lot.
So I think you want to go through it with somebody
that's already been through it with you.
- That sort of shared misery sometimes,
you know, shared experiences,
and the ups and downs of all of it.
It's nice having someone else you can relate to
that you can hang out with.
And it's weird, 'cause you'd go on set, and it's like,
"Oh, hey Carry how's it going?"
And last time you saw him was five years ago.
- And they're like your sister,
or your brother by the end of the shoot.
And then you walk off and you don't see each other.
- (laughs) And that's it.
- And that's it. - And then you run into them
like five years later, and you're like,
"Oh, god, how are you? What's going on?"
- When you have sequels
and you have the same characters
and actors that you're coming back to,
it's very sweet.
I mean there's a real sweetness to it.
- It's very weird, because usually after,
if you haven't seen somebody
for like 10 years or something,
you have a lot to catch up on.
But because you're in that environment
where you're just working on the movie it's like,
you just boom, fall right back into it.
- So and so's had a kid, and whatever,
and you catch up.
And there is this cool family dynamic with those shows.
- It's a real kind of special sort of life
that you get to have, that goes away.
- That goes away.
- It's really sad to
pack everything up at the end of the show,
and leave all these guys and gals behind.
- And when we wrap the show,
and the puppeteers and everybody were saying goodbye,
Don and Fiona actually drove out
and hung out with us for a couple of hours,
and said goodbye to everybody.
- And he gave a goodbye speech.
And just like, I don't know.
It sounds corny to talk about,
but just everybody in the room,
like there were a few people crying,
and they gave them all these gifts.
- But Don had to get up at like 5:00 in the morning
to go do the drone shot the next day.
We were all wrapped and we were gonna leave.
So he's like, "I'm coming out."
And then Fiona's like, "I'm coming with Don."
- And then he thanked me, and then I started crying
- People don't realize how seldom
you take away real friends from projects.
- Don Mancini is maybe my closest friend.
- Basically, my best friend now, which is so weird.
She's also young enough to be my daughter,
which makes it weirder (laughs) in a way.
- He liked helped me through my mother's death.
He was with me when I found out she died.
He like, just feels like my family.
- We've been through a lot together.
He was at both of our daughter's bat mitzvahs.
He was at our daughter's wedding.
With me, with the loss of his parents.
You know, we've been through a lot of stuff together.
- I've always looked up to him since I was eight years old.
And then we didn't talk for many, many years
through my high school times and everything.
And then I guess probably late in my 20s
is when we reconnected.
- We have a lot in common.
We have very similar taste in music,
and movies, obviously.
So we just sort of reconnected.
And it's like, oh he's a person now.
- And Alex Vincent is a close friend.
And Don has always been a close friend.
We never lost touch in the intervening years
between "Chucky 2" and "Cult" when I came back.
(everyone laughs)
- I am her favorite director.
- He's my favorite director ever.
- Jennifer's awesome.
She's one of the funniest people you will ever meet.
- And I'm a little intimidated by her, honestly.
She does nothing to make me feel that,
but she's just this bigger than life character.
- David Kirschner, I adore him, he's a sweetheart.
On every single film that I've been on
he has been like a very calm,
sort of avuncular presence.
- It would been bizarre for me to stay close
with him then, like 24-years-old calling,
"Hi Alex's mom, it's Christine,
can I talk to Alex?"
That would have been deviant.
(laughing)
Creepy, a little creepy, yeah.
So that didn't happen.
- You know, we only reconnected
maybe six years ago or something like that.
But we talk very often.
- I really love the person Alex has grown into being.
- No, I think it's really cool
how Brad and Fiona have a chance
to actually share something as intimate
as this incredible franchise.
- Fiona is like really truly, a family operation
that she is the daughter of the man
who's voiced Chucky for 30 years.
- As a father that has daughters,
it touches me that Fiona is,
she's truly the "Seed of Chucky."
(Fiona cackling)
- Also, now, it's more of me
just being very proud of her,
because she's got her feet, and doesn't need me.
Basically, she-
- I still need you. (laughs)
- I mean, she might call me once in awhile.
And you know, I very rarely,
but every once in awhile I'll volunteer some things
based on what I see.
But for the most part I love what I see.
- [Fiona] Oh, thanks, Dad.
- I'm really impressed.
- Thanks, Daddy.
- And we all do have a lot of respect
and admiration for each other.
- We all really enjoy each other's company,
and we all have fun.
And it's cool to be able
to work with people that you like.
- It's something that I'm so proud of
that that's a part of my career.
I don't think my life would be different.
It would not have been as enriched
if Don Mancini or Tony Gardner weren't part of it.
They're dear, dear friends
that I have deep conversations with, and love that.
- Chucky has like given me a career, and an identity.
- Chucky was the first thing that I did
that had a fan base.
And that got me-
- Noticed.
- Yeah, it got me a career.
- One of the best gifts to have in life,
particularly when you get older, you'll find out,
is that it's just nice for people to listen to you.
I've been doing this a long time.
I've been doing this for 30 years now.
So that like people still care about it,
and want to talk to me about it, that's awesome.
- See this is the reason why going into
the seventh Chucky film,
that Chucky has a huge fan base.
- The cult fan base of Chucky is very multi-faceted.
So you've got like the sort of the typical young guys
who love horror, and they love
to see guts and gore, and T&A.
- And it's not like a lot of horror films
where every movie is basically
the same movie that came before.
- And then you've got young women who are like tend
to be a little more sensitive than that.
And their interests in it tend to be a little bit different.
- Every movie that Don does there's like a new twist.
- People really love it.
People come with their little doll and all that.
"Could you sign that?"
- [Kyra] Their Glen doll?
- Yeah.
- Glen?
- Guess again, Daddy?
- Horror's always been counterculture.
I think that that makes the people who are fans
of it band together.
- I don't think there's any other genre
that has a fan base like horror.
- Horror fans are, and I include myself
in this category, very passionate.
But also very obsessed,
just like very obsessed with the films.
- And the fans always know so much about it.
They're well-versed, you know,
they're complete fanatics.
- They are devoted, loving, kind, non-violent,
(laughs) people who appreciate what you have created
and given them.
- It's celebrated. We get to celebrate it often.
You know, I do conventions with Christine Elise.
- I think one of the things I'm most entertained
about at conventions is it's
a gigantic collection of people.
- [Lin] Table after table, and thousands of people,
- Who are in society generally looked at as outsiders.
They tend to be wearing black, black T shirt.
- And they look like they should be
in a death metal band, and screaming
and Wielding an ax, and throwing shit at people.
- But they're, they seem to be like
the bizarrely, the most wholesome.
- Usually, they're the most honestly mild-mannered.
And it's like they're actually really normal people.
Not all horror fans shop at Hot Topic. No disrespect.
Not all of us do that. Only sometimes.
- Jennifer Tilly and I did Comicon.
And there were people coming up for autographs afterwards,
pushing babies in strollers.
And they had like Chucky or Tiffany tattooed on them.
It's like, wow these people are really into it.
- All the boys have tattoos.
All the girls are big girls, they're tough,
they're kick ass, those girls.
And they always have a great sense of humor.
I love the horror fans.
- I get so many letters, and like drawings.
- Comicon is great for us.
For the niche parts of entertainment
it's this great place where we get to be sort of thought of.
- But they were so polite,
and had such a genuine appreciation for it,
and such a love for it.
- Horror's so cool because it is a genre,
where the below the line people get appreciation.
- I love every single person I've met
at a convention, for real.
They are just excited, joyous, and giving.
- I think it's great to just come here,
and be surrounded by people who love horror.
Like at any horror convention,
it's just really cool to find more and more
of these out here.
And to see more and more people
from all different regions of the United States,
and all over the world coming to celebrate this genre.
- It's wonderful to see that kind of fan base support
for the movies, in person.
- I love being here, man.
I love being surrounded by this.
It's my favorite place to be.
- They're always great about meeting their fans.
Don Mancini always makes time
to sign every autograph.
- And so to meet them in person,
and just get to talk to them,
even if it's just for a few minutes
about those experiences, I really appreciate that.
- Story telling is about communication,
and it relies on both parties,
the story teller and the person who's hearing
the story and responding to it.
(audience applauds)
(indistinct talking)
- Any movie is a dialogue in a way.
And I think that's increasing true
in the world of social media.
- Internet has come along,
and everybody can share photos and cross analyze,
what he looked like in this film versus that film?
And a lot people have really good opinions,
and really smart ones.
And I think the fan base is something
that's become rather amazing in a way.
- You get like feedback from fans
and people who watch movies, way more quickly,
and more consistently than you ever did.
It's just immediate.
- My experience with fan conventions
is diametrically opposed to my experience
with fans online.
Fans online tend to be, I mean, half of them are lovely,
and effusive and great and curious, and wonderful.
- And if they're unhappy you hear it right away.
- And another half are incredibly mean,
and vindictive and scary even sometimes.
Nobody ever is in real life.
- We're such a large group of people
to be invested in a story
that has been told for over 30 years.
To be a part of that is truly special.
- To be a part of something
that so many people love is really surreal.
- Every new Chucky installment they're like,
"Oh my god, what's gonna happen?"
Because they really see Chucky as a real person.
- Whatever Chucky represents to people
is real, and legitimate.
And there's like passion for the character.
It just feels like this weird gift
that I get to be involved in it.
- It's an important chapter of my life
that thankfully, hasn't ended in 30 years.
I don't have any other project like that.
I don't think anybody else does.
- It's a blessing, definitely.
As my grandmother used to always say
about Chucky, "He's such a bitch."
But he's a bitch hat keeps on giving.
- [Kyra] Do you think of Chucky
as part of your own family?
- Of course, (laughs) I do think of Chucky
as family he's mine, he's mine.
Although Tony will say, "He's mine."
And David Kirschner will say, "He's mine."
'Cause success has many fathers. (laughs)
- We joke about that, that he's our third child.
- I'm proud to have been his papa.
- I think of Chucky as my little demented brother.
It's true when I see him sometimes,
you know, I feel close to him.
- No, I don't feel like he's a little brother.
I feel like maybe he's like
a dog that really lived a really long time.
That you've had your whole life, you love him,
but he shits on your floor. (laughs)
- I don't think of Chucky as a kid.
I think of Chucky as an employer sometimes
in a weird way.
And then he's a family member.
- Our little boy, is what we always say in this house.
is what you were trying to say, right?
- There you go. You ratted me out.
- (chuckles) and we got it on video.
- Tiffany's my favorite. (laughs)
I think being part of the Chucky family,
there's just somebody who truly gets you,
because not every other daughter,
or father or person has grown up
in the same environment.
I feel so connected to everybody.
I like these relationships,
and I hope they grow more over the years.
- Now, we really will be the perfect family.
(tinkling, eerie music)
- I think these relationships have definitely more
than grown over the past few years.
- It's funny 'cause I don't think any of us expected
it to continue on, let alone gather
a larger family in the process
as it keeps moving forward.
And now we're headed to Canada.
We're going to Toronto to shoot a TV series called "Chucky."
- I am coming to you from the set of the "Chucky" series.
Which we are filming here in Toronto, Ontario.
Who would have thought, 25 years ago when he talked me
into playing this part, that I would still be
at it many movies later,
and now, a television series?
- Eight episodes, eight hour long episodes of killer doll.
The foundation is the same.
Don Mancini is the show runner, and wrote the pilot,
and is directing the pilot.
David Kirschner is producing.
All the lead puppeteers are back on it.
- And of course, darling old Chucky,
the star of our show.
We must not forget him,
because if we did he would get very, very cranky.
(bell rings)
I have to be quiet now, 'cause we're filming. Bye.
- It's been an interesting journey really.
The world has gotten a lot smaller.
- And the family's gotten larger.
- It's a little dysfunctional and deadly,
but everybody gets along and has a lot of fun.
- And we're just gonna keep on killing people.
The family that slays together
stays together. - Stays together.
(urgent, dramatically ominous full orchestral music)