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ARTICLES >Film Comment interview This is an interview Brad conducted with Film Comment Magazine entitled Wonder Brad by Marlaine Glicksman © Film Comment Magazine All Rights Reserved Several years ago, during his acting class at Columbia film school, Brad Dourif was teaching a lesson about "simple reality" -- acting truthfully under imaginary circumstances -- an exercise taught to him by Neighborhood Playhouse founder Sanford Meisner. It goes: make a simple observation about your acting partner which he/she in turn repeats verbatim and which you repeat, incessantly back and forth, until something spontaneously grows and alters the repetition, a change which you repeat, ad infinitum. To demonstrate, Dourif chose a student. He fixed his eyes on Dourif's face, then slowly said, "You have a very pointy nose." Though Dourif's looks are distinct, they don't prevent his complete transformation -- sans makeup or elaborate costume. This is the actor who played stammering, vulnerable Billy Bibbit of Milos Foreman's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest; the preacher-naif in John Huston's Wise Blood; the lovestruck Younger Brother in Forman's Ragtime; the hyperactive, watusi-dancing Raymond of Dennis Hopper's amoeboid entourage in David Lynch's Blue Velvet; plus roles in David Lynch's Dune and Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate. You cannot forget the performance. Or the pointy nose. Dourif plays both teacher and characters hot-wired, implosive and intense. Like a tightly coiled watch spring, he finally flies apart. Dourif's characters attempt to control their inner certainty that they are out of control. Home was Huntington, West Virginia, where his grandparents established a color factory ("Ultramarine blue was the big color"). Dourif's dad died when he was three and his mother, an actress in local theater, remarried a golfer. With six kids, Dourif recalls, "We led a typical, middle-class kind of life." He decided to become an actor at 16, while working sets and bit parts in summer stock, and after a year he quit his hometown college for New York City, where he joined the budding Circle Rep theater company. "New York", says Dourif, "was scary -- I was not prepared. I just buried myself in work." He took Meisner's professional classes and did scene study with Marshall Mason and Lanford Wilson. In three years, Dourif became a successful actor. Now transplanted from New York and his upstate goat farm, Dourif seems assimilated to life in Los Angeles, with his wife and two daughters. So far, he has little desire to return to theater. "I just like movies. I always liked rehearsal when I did plays, and doing movies is just like rehearsal." --M.G. M.G.Did you intentionally pursue a career as a character actor? And what do you think is the difference between a character actor and a lead? B.D.Well, character actors get a lot less money. When I was young, I wanted to be a character actor. My heroes were Dustin Hoffman and actors who could do a variety of things. Some actors draw people in, are trusted immediately and deservedly become stars. Like Jack Nicholson. Then there are people who have an edge -- like I think I've got -- who can play a lot of different roles. M.G.What attracts you to a role? B.D.Different things at different times. I'm trying to get out of these killers. When I take a role, the criteria is feeding my family. That comes first. I have to work with what's available, like everybody else. M.G.Is there a difference in training to become a character or a lead? B.D.Fundamentally, no. There are certain things you need to know. You must understand what is habitually off in your character. Because each is different in some very clear way. You need to know what it is that you're doing differently that's second nature. M.G.But leads must be more universal about their peculiarities? B.D.They're certainly more accessible and likable. A good character part should be accessible, not necessarily likable, but certainly people should understand him. M.G.How is it different to play a character who's over the edge, as opposed to someone's who's more "normal"? B.D.Well, it can be more taxing emotionally to play somebody who's really off or extreme in some way. Suppose you're playing a rapist. You're carrying around a lot of anger and hate. M.G.Character actors specialize in dealing with our negative emotions? B.D.Yeah. I mean, there is an exception. Othello has to deal with jealousy. Now, that's a pretty agonizing lead. M.G.Are character actors really a metaphor? B.D.American cinema has always been about melodrama. We like very clear good guys and bad guys. The murderer is the kind of guy we want to hate, so we feel good when he's killed in the end. We have returned to seeing life only as good or evil, right or wrong. The Eighties was the decade of Rambo and high entertainment, and good-versus-evil melodramas. It was a marketing era. We want things that are predictable. Marketing is a big influence on which films get made and which don't. At some screenings they ask audiences what they think about final cuts and then go back and accordingly re-edit. I think that's hugely stupid. It's like polling janitors on how to make shoes. Janitors don't know to make shoes, they know how to clean something. If you want to find out how to clean something, you poll janitors. You want to find out how to tell stories, you go to people who tell stories. M.G.How do you see the Nineties? B.D.I was talking to Timothy Leary, who said the future would be mind-alteration or mega-brain-power stories -- like Medium Rare, a film I worked on recently, in which a man's brain is altered after he's been microwaved in an oven -- because computers and art seem to be moving toward high tech. I always thought there was going to be a heavy emphasis on magic. And I still think that some problems have never been solved: no one's really ever been able to tell King Arthur or the Holy Grail stories well. But they will. M.G.Do you feel that directing has changed? B.D.There's something fundamental that will never change about directing. Maybe the way directors talk will be different, but the way is always the same. And the way everybody understands is the same. M.G.You don't see directors being influenced by these changes, or by marketing? B.D.We will tell different kinds of stories, so we'll need new images. But if you're going to create tension, the basics won't change. And won't, until we transcend the way we belong to the world. Consciousness is based on the idea of "I" in time and space, with a cause-and-effect relationship. Somebody says, "What'd you do today?" and it's a story. You can't change that. M.G.Do you have a favorite director? B.D.I love David Lynch. He's the purest, most original of all the directors I've worked with. His vision is so unique. His thing is truly his own. He's extremely lovable and the least defensive. Not that the others are so defensive -- I'm defensive. M.G.What was it like working with John Huston on Wise Blood? B.D.I was very scared and uncomfortable. I was the lead. I was insecure. I didn't think I could act my way out of a paper bag, you know. Oddly enough, he was the one who left me alone the most. M.G.And what about Milos Forman on Cuckoo's Nest? B.D.Oh, Milos is stubborn, charming and very determined. So you know when you're there, you're going to do the best you can. And he won't quit until you have. M.G.You've worked with several actors time and again. Does this alter your relationship with them? B.D.Actually, it's always a pleasure when you work with somebody more than once. You can begin to really learn things. What they do that really makes them good. Some are able to let go of things better and be fresher, newer each time. Somebody else takes more risks. You learn about determination and work. M.G.How is it working with an English director like Alan Parker? B.D.English directors believe in the director's control over the project. For instance, in Mississippi Burning, I gave the exact performance Parker wanted me to give. But he didn't say much, you know. He wanted it kind of thrown away and real simple. Shoot -- it wasn't just Parker, I was working with Gene Hackman, who is one of the greatest actors this country has. It's really exciting doing a scene with this guy because he becomes so involved in what's going on. He's just right there. The better he is, the better you are. It just grows. M.G.In Mississippi Burning, what motivated your character's prejudice and brutality? B.D.Underneath, prejudice is the need to feel good about yourself. That's the power behind it. To prejudge without consideration is not an intelligent choice. It's the need to scapegoat. That's why we have war, why people get divorced. That's the tragedy of child abuse and rape. America scapegoated Mississippi. All the collective guilt, the way we look down on people, was shoved onto Mississippi. Because it had the Klan. But to say that there was less prejudice in Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Watts or anywhere else was bullshit. There wasn't. It was just easy with Mississippi. M.G.Did you like Deputy Pell? B.D.I had to understand him. I know what it's like to feel like a piece of shit. I know what it's like to have low self-esteem. I think we all do. But I know. And that's the way he feels. That's why he was a bigot. The great thing about pain is that it levels you. It makes you human, humble. If I can feel a bigot's pain, then I feel more compassionate toward him. Now, I may not be able to do anything about his bigotry. But, I might not feel such righteous indignation toward him. I mean, he's looking down on something, and I'm looking down on him. There's no difference. M.G.What role would you love to play? B.D.St. Francis of Assisi. I think he saw something. M.G.Are you religious? B.D.In a certain sense I'm deeply religious. There is something fundamentally spiritual about people, even atheists. We relate to something larger than ourselves. Everybody does in some way. People just express is differently. M.G.Do you carry that sense of relating to something bigger into your characters as well? B.D.Yeah. When I was teaching, one of the things I said was, it's in your concept of God, no matter what it is -- even if you're an atheist, or reject the whole idea of God. But it's somewhere in the struggle around that idea that there's a lot of power in people's behavior. There's a lot of energy. You begin to see people really come alive. And that's what I want to say: check that out when you're stumped on a character some time. Because there's life in there. You want your stories to be alive, don't you? Well, look where the life is. Look to what makes people feel alive. But I believe that I don't have the answer, or that anybody does. Once it's the answer, it's over.