bruce dern
Discussing Hitchcock’s fat neck among other anecdotes.
Bruce Dern’s six-decade career has encompassed classic sci-fi, two Hitchcocks and more westerns than even his pin-sharp mind can remember. There’s little he hasn’t done. Now 79, he’ll shortly be seen in Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight as a chair-bound, ornery bastard. In real life, though, he’s the perfect gentleman, regaling Agenda with over an hour of prime anecdotage… How would you describe The Hateful Eight? Quentin is very much a devotee of what has gone before, and as far as I’m concerned the man made an opera. You have never seen characters like this in a western in your life, and the dialogue is better than anything I’ve ever seen. Tell us about Sanford Smithers... I play an old Southern general who really existed who won the Battle of Baton Rouge. It was the first time the North used uniformed cavalry officers who were black, and I was responsible for killing every fucking one! They all died except one, and that’s Samuel L. Jackson. Fourteen years later we end up in a cabin together… How did you find filming in Colorado with Sam, Kurt Russell et al? We had no heat in this little cabin in Telluride, so it would be seven below zero in the morning. Then we went back to Hollywood and he built the same set on a soundstage he’d had refrigerated – all so he could see our breath! And we were on set a long time, 161 days. Every scene had to be done eight times, in CinemaScope, from eight points of view.
What was Hollywood like when you started out?
The lucky thing for my generation was we had the chance to work with legends who were bigger than life. I started with a legend; in 1958 I was put under contract by Elia Kazan. And the first play I was in was directed by Lee Strasberg. You can’t be bigger than life today, unless you’re Clint.
Hitchcock must have been bigger than life, in every way…
In 1963 I did Marnie for Mr Hitchcock, then later he asked me to do Family Plot, when his neck was so big he couldn’t turn his head to look at you. At the end of the first day he went to get up off his chair, but his girth was so big that the chair came with him! So I grabbed the back legs so he could walk out of it.
Forty years on, Silent Running is considered a classic…
Douglas Trumbull was a genius because when he looked through a viewfinder he saw magic. We made the movie for $900,000 on an aircraft carrier and those domes, those geodesic domes, were made in his garage. I went in and it was like Santa’s workshop.
You’ve been Oscar-nominated twice, once for Coming Home in 1979 and more recently for Nebraska. How does it feel?
I appreciated it enormously, but to me the nomination is the win; you cannot consider that your performance is better than four other people’s. It’s really wonderful, though. Two years ago I was there with Nebraska and Laura [ Dern] went with me, and last year she was there with Wild and I went there with her.
How did you feel about your daughter following in your footsteps?
When she was nine years old, Laura told me she wanted to be an actress and asked me for some advice. I told her she would never have a better audience than the one on set. They have to be there, so if you can get their fucking attention you know you’re doing good.
‘Quentin’s dialogue is better than anything I’ve ever seen’