50 Years of Brad Dourif

Today is actually Brad Dourif’s 75th birthday, but we’re coming up on 50 years since he first came to widespread public attention as Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). I was sorely tempted to head this post with a photo of him as Billy, but this pic of him as the younger brother in Ragtime (1981) has a bit more of a vaudeville flavor, and we always favor that on Travalanche. The other factor that makes this post timely is that I’m very much enjoying his daughter Fiona’s work on The Pitt of late (and am a fan of that show in general — thus far).

Who would have ever dreamt that almost all of the supporting cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — and by that I mean, the guys who played the mental patients, many of who were cast for their, dare I say, freakishness — would go on to amazing, long, and fruitful careers? Granted, I was just a kid when I first saw it, but I’m sure I simply imagined that, with the exceptions of William Redfield and Will Sampson, most of the guys who played patients were basically one-offs whose single claim to fame would always be that they got to appear in one very unique movie? I mean, picture those guys in your head: Sydney Lassick, Christopher Lloyd, Danny De Vito, Vincent Schiavelli, even Michael Berryman???

And of course, Dourif. I mean, he has worked a lot these 50 years! Granted, most of his roles have been ones rather hilariously in keeping with the initial note he struck. We cherry-pick only a little when we prove the case that his entire career has been more than a little, shall we say, Bibbitesque. Think of these roles, and these movies: Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), Wise Blood (1979), Dune (1984), Blue Velvet (1988), Child’s Play (1988 — and the many, many Chucky sequels), Spontaneous Combustion (1990), Graveyard Shift (1990), The Exorcist III (1990), Critters 4 (1992), Trauma (1993), Death Machine (1994), Murder in the First (1995), Alien Resurrection (1997), the Lord of the Rings trilogy (as Wormtongue), the Halloween reboots, etc etc, and of course appearances in tv movies like Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), Terror on Highway 91 (1989), and Escape from Terror: The Teresa Stamper Story (1995), and Swamp Volcano (2012), and guest shots on shows like Tales of the Unexpected, The X Files, Tales from the Crypt, etc, where he usually played a serial killer. And all because he’s kind of intense, has those bugging eyes, and comes from West Virginia?

But I’m here to tell ya, the guy’s got way more to offer than casting directors seem to think. He studied with Sanford Meisner, and worked with Lanford Wilson at Circle Rep. It was his performance opposite Kevin Conway in When Ya Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? that convinced Milos Forman to hire him for Cuckoo’s Nest. Oh wait…that one’s about a psycho killer, too. Never mind.

But never you mind, because Dourif did get an incredible chance to shine on Deadwood (2004-06, and the later Deadwood movie in 2019). He was nominated for an Emmy for his work as the alcoholic town doctor on that show, and I was rooting for him all the way. It was one of a thousand risky choices that David Milch made on that show that truly paid off. He wanted to create an extreme environment, and Dourif’s Doc Cochran had the post-traumatic stare of a man who’d been dragged through muddy streets at the end of a rope more than a few times. There was only a couple of times when I thought he needed to dial back just a hair. The rest of the time, my feeling was: an educated and compassionate man, in a place this wild and scary? Yeah, that’s about right.

Dourif recently announced his retirement, except for (ironically) the Chucky movies. How about retiring the Chucky films, and doing everything ELSE, Brad?