Living With Chucky Director Welcomes Fans Into Chucky’s Bloody Family

Brad and Fiona Dourif in Living with Chucky - CREDIT: Yellow Veil Pictures

“Yes, Brad Dourif is Chucky. But to me, my dad is also Chucky because the doll’s performance is half the battle. It takes seven people and one of those people is my dad… I didn’t realize how much I think of my dad as Chucky until these conversations. But really, the thing I realized in my conversation with Brad and Fiona was that Fiona was around my age back when Brad did the first Child’s Play. It was like, ‘Wow, we really did have similar experiences.’ She was six and went into the voiceover booth and saw her dad screaming that he was being burned alive… My first vivid memory is similar. I watched my dad also die on-screen in Seed of Chucky. We had very similar experiences growing up but like 20 years apart.” Due to this, at a young age, Chucky used to give Gardner nightmares. 

The most charming part about Living With Chucky is hearing the franchise’s cast and crew open up, joke, and celebrate their connection to Chucky and his homicidal family. Hearing John Waters state that Glen looks like a boy he’d date is delightful. 

“When John Waters says his first line and is like, ‘Bride of Chucky added sex to horror. We didn’t see that before.’ I was so trying not to laugh in that interview,” Gardner says. “We had to cut out a giggle of mine because it was just too hilarious… I always laugh when Alex Vincent is like, ‘I don’t think of Chucky as my brother. I think of him as an old dog that you’ve had forever. You love him, but he still shits on your floor.’”

After spending years writing, directing, and editing Living With Chucky, Gardner found what she was searching for with this documentary. What did these two interconnected families have to say to each other? Was she surprised at how it feels now to be done with this project? 

“Through these conversations, I realized producer David Kirschner is also a dad with two daughters,” she said. “Skyping didn’t exist in the 80s. He felt very separated from his family too. It was so lovely to feel connected to and finally meet everybody.”

“When I did the short version of this film, it opened for Cult of Chucky. I experienced having my film played before a Chucky film, and then seeing Cult of Chucky in the theater and experiencing it with Don Mancini, Fiona Dourif, and Jennifer Tilly, and it was like, ‘Wow, I feel really involved in this thing now.’ I’m so grateful that these people are who they are and have been a second family to everybody while they’re away from their own. That’s really what I got out of it. It’s like, ‘Ok, this was hard. But my dad had somebody to lean on – and continues to because it’s still going on. But now I get to be involved in it and around it. It’s so special.”

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