“The family that slays together, stays together” is the motto for Living with Chucky, a documentary out now on Blu-ray that delves into the Chucky horror franchise that is home to the horror classic Child’s Play and the current SyFy TV series Chucky. The film also explores how it takes a community, if not a family, to create a movie, especially in the horror genre.

The director of Living with Chucky is Kyra Elise Gardner, the daughter of famed make-up effects designer, animatronic effects’ supervisor, and puppeteer Tony Gardner, who since the 2004 release Seed of Chucky (in which he has a memorable cameo) has been responsible for bringing the serial killer doll, Chucky, to life. When a young Kyra watched Chucky decapitate her father in Seed of Chucky it began an exploration into the world of filmmaking, especially the Chucky films, which under the watch of writer and director Don Mancini, has seen the recurring cast and crew become a family.
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Kyra first delved into the Chucky world and its impact on her family in the short film, The Doll House, which was featured on the Cult of Chucky Blu-ray release. Several years later, she has expanded her short into a feature documentary that not only explores the making of the Chucky movies, but also features interviews with the voice of Chucky himself, Brad Dourif, his daughter and fellow actor, Fiona Dourif, Jennifer Tilly, Abigail Breslin, Lin Shaye, John Waters, and more. For more details and behind-the-schenes, you can read Gardner’s interview with Collider’s Matthew Pejkovic on the making of Life with Chucky below.

Image via Screambox

MATTHEW PEJKOVIC: Documentaries about horror films have become much more prolific now than ever before. What separates Living with Chucky from other horror documentaries is the intimacy shown between the creation and its creators. It takes a community to put a film together; but the thing about the Chucky franchise, especially the last several projects, is that community, that family, has continued to live on through the same key crew members and cast. When did you realize, as the daughter of Tony Gardner, that your dad is a part of this other kind of world that is exciting and has great creativity, but that it also a family in its own?

KYRA ELISE GARDNER: I probably started to notice that later on in high school. I love my dad, and I think his job is the coolest and his work is the coolest, but you don’t really realize the impact it has on other people. I grew up in a small town, and I was the only kid into horror movies and things like that, so my dad and I went to a horror convention together when I was in high school and people were asking him for his autograph, and I was like, “Oh! The horror community is this vast community of people who are super dedicated.”

So that was the first inkling of– I didn’t realize the capacity of how big this is until I was on the set of the Cult of Chucky re-shoots that were in LA, because at the time I had already done the short documentary of this film, or I was filming it, so I had gotten to know a few people already, and it was really intimate, and Don (Mancini) and Fiona (Dourif) and my dad were there, and just getting to hang out with them, I realized that I went down the right path, because this is definitely a family, on and off-screen.

Your short film, The Doll House, was the start of your exploration into your father’s work and the Chucky world that he helped create, but it also explores the different family ties that this franchise has where there is not only yourself and your father, but also Fiona and Brad Dourif. Was it always the thought that you would make a feature like Living with Chucky and the short was the precursor? Or did you do the short, it turned out well, and you thought there is more you could dive into here?

GARDNER: Yeah, basically the latter of that, because I definitely didn’t go in with the intention of thinking of a feature down the road, but it wasn’t until I saw the [short] films’ reception at film festivals, and Chucky fans really seemed to be gravitating towards that personal aspect, and I had so much footage on my hard drives already, I was like, “The basis for a feature is already here, and I should just see what I can do and if I could create anything with this.”

Don Mancini is a Don by name and a don by nature; he is the godfather of this [Chucky universe]. He wrote the first Child’s Play film and through everything else Don has been there as either a writer or director or producer. What was it like first connecting with Don? Because he is the thread that brings everyone together; he hired your father to do the puppetry on The Seed of Chucky, and he has become great friends with a lot of the people he has worked with on set.

GARDNER: It was really cool to meet Don for the first time! We went to his house, which was also cool because I got to meet these people where they live and see what they are like. Diving into Don’s history is actually inspiring, because he started this whole endeavor pretty much around the same age that I am now, so it was really inspiring to see what could be created off of just a script and people taking chances with you, and obviously he’s fostered those relationships over the years and just kept going no matter what position he’s held on it. (Chucky) has been his baby, and I think that is very rare in general, but also in horror for the same voices to be behind it. Hearing how fondly he talks about everything– you worry because he’s been doing this for 30-plus years, and in interviewing him, of course I’m going to be asking him some questions that he’s already been asked before, so I was a little nervous, and he still answers every question like it was brought to him brand new, which is really cool because I could see people in this business getting tired of that or resentful somehow, but (Don) really loves (Chucky) and treats it like a new thing with every iteration, which is really cool!

Image via Universal 1440 Entertainment / Universal Pictures Home Entertainement

In Living with Chucky you focus on how much of a sacrifice the crew and filmmakers and actors made in their personal lives in order to make sure their professional lives are looked after. Your father talks about how many times he had to be on set in different states around the country and miss out on family events, and others talk about that as well. As the daughter of a prominent person in the film industry, how important was it for you to present the fact that when your dad leaves to be with his work family, he is missing out on your lives and that it’s something that weighs heavily upon him?

GARDNER: It wasn’t something that, as soon as I started the feature, I would be diving into, but when going through the interview footage I decided that was something I wanted to talk about. I got a little nervous because some things in Hollywood are taboo to talk about. You would be on a set where so many things are chaotic, or some people are inappropriate, but you don’t hear people speak up and talk about how things could be better. So I was a little nervous that I might be shooting myself in the foot if I talked negatively about anything, but it’s important, especially in documentaries, that it is authentic. We can’t just be a happy family that once in a while can still see each other. No, the reality is that you are leaving another family behind for several months at a time, and it is hard. So as soon as I knew that was something I wanted to address, I made sure to kind of ask those same questions to anybody else I had to interview, and made sure we dove into it.

When was the first time you and your father spoke about ‘movie magic’? Because in Living with Chucky you talk about how in The Seed of Chucky there is a scene where he gets decapitated, and how at a young age that was something that was really strange and had quite an effect on you. Was it around that time when your dad said to you, “this is what I do, this is how it’s done?” And when you get that wisdom, when you get that insight, and you look behind Oz’s curtain, did that start an obsession for you to dive into how all this movie magic works in other films as well?

GARDNER: Yeah, I think it really was! If it hadn’t happened before, the instance of me watching The Seed of Chucky and my dad dying was the big impotence for a conversation about “this is fake, let’s go through it,” and I knew to a certain extent, but my dad had really tried to keep work and home separate, but obviously it is hard. There is bleed-over, there are late hours, he has to bring stuff home. But we hadn’t had that sit-down conversation, I think, until that Seed of Chucky moment.

I believe I was around eight at the time. The more I got to be introduced into my dad’s realm with how things worked and what was fake and those things, I definitely started to look for it in other horror movies and SFX moves, and completely desensitized myself to the filmmaking process because I know what’s real and what’s fake, but also how they did it. So even if you could see something that’s fake on screen, I probably know what it is made out of at this point, which is really cool and helpful now that I’ve decided to go into filmmaking myself.

Image via Rogue Pictures

Living with Chucky took several years to complete. Now that it is out and has received excellent reviews, what is next for you? Is documentary filmmaking something that you want to focus on? Are you also looking at feature narrative filmmaking?

GARDNER: Documentary filmmaking, I never intended to go into. I kind of fell into it. When I first graduated from college, I was doing this film, obviously, and then I got hired to shoot and direct a making of the Foo Fighters’ horror movie, Studio 666, so hopefully that goes into editing at some point and becomes a documentary. But I would say, aside from that, I will step away from documentaries and I really want to dive into narrative horror and fantasy, and will potentially get a short under my belt because it’s been a while since I’ve been in documentary land, and try to tackle my first narrative feature for sure.

Living with Chucky is available now on Sreambox and Blu-ray.