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Arrow:
Did you go to film school? DM:
I did. I went to UCLA, I was an undergraduate. Arrow:
When did you start to write the screenplay for the original
"Child’s Play"? DM:
I wrote the first Child’s Play while at I was at school at
UCLA. Arrow:
Where did you get the inspiration for it? Was it “My Buddy”,
”The Cabbage Patch Kids”...? DM:
It was certainly in the wake of “The Cabbage Patch Dolls”. My
father worked in advertisement and marketing when I grew up. So as
a kid, I was around advertising campaigns a lot and I
always wanted to write something about how advertising
affected children. It’s just an interesting area, very right
for satire and everything. So that was always in my head.
I’d always been a horror movie fan growing up and then
around that time, in the mid 80’s, “Cabbage Patch Dolls”
were very popular and movies like “Gremlins” had come out
so animatronics had come to a point where you could really
have creatures articulate. I had seen “Twilight Zone”
episodes where dolls were alive but it occurred to me that it
had never been done before in such a way where you could treat
the doll as a full fledged character, with lengthy
dialogue, a character arc and all that stuff. And I realized
that special effects had gotten to the point where
you could do that. So all that came together in the mid 80’s,
when I was at school and that’s what lead me to write it.
Arrow:
Did you have any input as to how Chucky looked in the original
"Child's Play"? DM:
Yes, I described the doll pretty specifically in my original
script: two and a half feet tall, red hair, freckles, blue
eyes, red sneakers, blue overalls...all of that was within my
original script. And then David Kirshner, who produced the
movie and who is also an artist, actually drew the doll based on my
description and design. Arrow:
So you’re happy with the way that he came out?
Arrow:
John Lafia and Tom Holland both contributed to the screenplay
right? DM:
The first one, yes, but I wrote the original script. Arrow:
What did they add or change? DM:
Mainly the voodoo. The voodoo was not part of my original
script. See, in my original script, instead of being possessed
by a serial killer, the doll was more of an embodiment of the
little boy's subconscious. And the way the doll came to life
was different. One of the features of the dolls is that it had
fake blood in it, a red synthetic substance so if you’re a
kid and you’re playing with the doll and its latex skin
breaks like a cut, then it would bleed a little bit and then
you’d have to buy these “Good Guy” Band-Aids. All part
of the marketing craze to get you to buy extra stuff. So you
had to buy these special Band-Aids to stop the bleeding. In
my original script, the little kid, like a right of brotherhood,
cut his thumb and the doll's thumb and mixed the blood
together…and you know how that works, right? Arrow:
Yeah, yeah... DM:
That’s how the doll came to life and was therefore an
embodiment of the little boy's id. I played with the audience
a little bit more; I delayed the revelation that the doll was
in fact alive. I teased the audience for longer into thinking:
was the doll alive or was the little boy actually a
psychopath? Arrow:
That would’ve worked better, I think. DM:
I thought so, too. I thought that it was creepier really. What
happens is that all the people the doll targeted: the
babysitter, ultimately the boy’s mother and also the boy’s
teacher (which was a set piece we wound up using in
“Child’s Play 2"), were all the boy’s enemies.
Enemies that children are not allowed expressing anger at. In
the original script, because his mother was a busy person,
always being at work because they had no father around (the father was
dead), the boy had a lot of anger towards his
mother since she couldn’t spend too much time with him.
That was kind of the idea: the doll was going after people
that the little boy felt anger at but couldn’t express. Arrow:
So it was more psychological. DM:
Absolutely, much more of a psychological thriller.
DM:
That was great. That was Tom Holland’s idea. Tom had
previously worked with Brad Dourif on a movie called "Fatal
Beauty". Arrow:
Yeah, with Woopie Goldberg... DM:
Right, so I thought that was really a great idea, I thought
that was brilliant. And I can’t take any credit for that at
all because I had nothing to do with it. But that was really
smart.
Arrow:
Okay, now let's hop on to "Child’s Play 2". In the script, the Catherine
Hicks and Chris Sarandon characters were excluded. Was that
due to the actors being unavailable? Or did you want to take
it in a different direction? DM:
In my original draft of CP2, they had cameos. If memory serves
me right, it was more of a budgetary thing, they just wanted to
save the money. I don’t know if either of them was ever
officially approached for doing it, but I don’t think they
were. I do remember that in the very first draft of CP2 there
was a courtroom scene I had written, it was in the wake of the
murders to determine the little boy's sanity at the hearing,
and the mother and the cop were there, but in any event, I was
told to take it out very early on. Arrow:
Due to pacing? DM:
No, they just didn’t want to deal with having to get
those actors back, thinking that it would be too expensive or
something. Arrow:
Are you happy with the way CP2 came out? DM:
Hmmm, you know certain aspects I like and certain aspects I don’t.
I feel like it’s too much of a retread of the first one in
retrospect. At the time when we did it I was. But with the
benefit of having 10 years or whatever I think that’s its
too similar to the first one for one thing, just too much of a
retread. Although you see more of the doll. But I feel the
most successful sequels are those that kind of reinvent the
wheel to some degree.
DM:
Well yeah I just felt like CP2 was maybe a little bit too much
of the same. Arrow:
Well, at least it brought Chucky into the limelight DM:
Yeah, that’s true. Arrow: The effects were better. No midgets in a suit. DM:
Definitely, yeah…
Arrow:
Let's hop on to "Child’s Play 3", which
is actually my least favorite of them all. DM: As
most people would agree... Arrow:
Yeah, it was released only a year after "Childs Play 2"… DM:
Actually nine months... Arrow:
Nine Months! DM:
Yeah, it was ridiculous. Arrow:
That’s crazy! DM:
I was writing CP3 before CP2 had even been released. There
wasn’t enough time between the movies. You really have to
give the audience time to miss the characters. You don’t
want to oversaturate the market place… another term I
learned from my father. Yeah, I just think it was just too much, too
quickly basically.
DM:
In a sense I had written so much between CP1 and CP2, I really
would’ve preferred to do something else first. In fact,
initially I was supposed to work on “The Green Hornet” and
that was for Universal as well but they told me to write CP3
first. You know, I think my creative juices as far as Chucky
goes were maybe a little bit low because I just had been doing
it so much. Arrow:
In such a short amount of time too. You just finished CP2 and
boom...CP3! DM:
Right… I tried to do different things with it by setting it
in a military school, by making Andy older…stuff like
that…. but again it was…you know…more of the same. Continue
reading the interview here |
I've
seen every Child's Play flick on the big screen and always had
a soft spot for them. Child's Play was spawned from the mind of
screenwriter Don Mancini who also went on to write the three
sequels. Arrow caught up with Don to talk about the series and
the canned "Seed Of Chucky". Here's how it went
down.
Child's Play 
DM:
Yeah, more or less. David made certain refinements. In my
original script, I had described the red hair as being more of
a spiky Bart Simpson kind of haircut. I mean, that was before
there was a Bart Simpson but that kind of spiky, punky kind of
look cause that was popular at the time. David decided to go
with more of a mop top kind of thing. So yes, certain little
details were changed, but overall it was very close to what I
had described.
Arrow:
Once they made the changes and cast Brad Dourif as the voice of
Chucky, were you happy with the casting?
Child's Play 2 
Arrow:
Kind of like "Bride Of Chucky"...
Child's Play 3 
Arrow:
Did you have a hard time writing a script so fast?More Interviews with the Arrow...
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