Tilly's Diary

On the Bride of Chucky DVD, a copy of Jennifer Tilly's diary-type-thing can be found. For those of you who have yet to buy the DVD (you bum), I have typed out the contents of the diary. You should check out the actual diary on the DVD, it's really cool looking and is a lot more interesting than just the text version.

February 26, 1998
Driving home from Sunset Plaza with a trunk full of purchases, I suddenly feel impoverished. I reach for the cell phone and call my manager.

"How come I don't have any auditions?" I say panicky. "Why don't I have a job?"

"As a matter of a fact," Chuck, my manager says, "I was just about to call you. You�re going to get an offer tomorrow. A horror film... It's about a little doll..."

"A Chucky movie?" I screech, swerving to avoid a car. "Isn't that the last stop before the actor's graveyard?"

March 2, 1998
The offer comes in. It is low. "The problem is, because Tiffany turns into a doll, they see you mainly as a voice-over artist," Chuck explains. "Voice-over artists traditionally don't get paid much. But you gotta see the doll. It's really horrifying."

"The only thing horrifying me right now is the size of the offer," I say, then hang up the phone.

Secretly, I already want to do the movie. I like the trashy sensibility of my character, Tiffany, and the campy, self-referential tone of the screenplay. The director, Ronny Yu, is a prot�g� of John Woo, and his director of photography, Peter Pau, is brilliant. But the real deciding factor is that I've found out a girlfriend of mine desperately wants the part.

March 5, 1998
"I can't believe it," Chuck says. "They made your price. You should be an agent."

March 9, 1998
Today is my first day doing the voice-overs for Tiffany, bride of Chucky. Because Chucky and Tiffany are animatronic, we have to do the voices way in advance so they can key the dolls' movements to our dialogue.

Brad Dourif, who does the voice of Chucky, is small, wiry, and intense. I am a little in awe of him at first, because he was so brilliant in Mississippi Burning. But once we start working, we have a really good chemistry. During the dolls' sex scene, we add lines like, "Mmmm, bouncy!" and "Baby, I'm all rubber." When Tiffany is dying, we both cry.

"How come I didn't get a girlfriend sooner?" Brad asks the producers.

April 7, 1998
I am at a house in the hills shooting an ESPN promo with Flea and Deepak Chopra. Flea is disgruntled because Deepak doesn't remember him. "We spent the whole day together once," he complains to me. "I don't know why he doesn't remember me. I remember him! He's supposed to be the enlightened one. I'm supposed to be the junkie-drughead musician!" When I mention that I'm doing Bride of Chucky, Flea's face lights up. "I love Chucky!" he exclaims.

April 10, 1998
Chuck calls me. "Jennifer," he says, "this is gonna sound a little odd, but did you get the tarantulas?"

"The what?" I say. I'm thinking we might have a bad connection.

"The tarantulas. Apparently they FedExed you some dead tarantula parts. They want to rub them on your hands to see if you're allergic."

"Why?" I am dumbfounded.

"I know; it's weird," Chuck says apologetically. "But it's for that scene where the tarantula walks on you. You don't have a problem with spiders, do you?"

"No, I guess it's okay," I say dubiously. I had been under the blissful illusion that there were going to add the spider later, with computer graphics.

"Good. Well, keep an eye out for that envelope then. The tarantulas must still be in the mail."

April 22, 1998
I am in Toronto, where the production's shooting, for my first costume fitting I am in agony, but I look great. My waist is laced to two-thirds of its normal size, and my breasts spill out the top on my corset. I have on industrial-strength fishnets that leave chain-link impressions on my legs long after I take them off. My vinyl fetish boots are so high-heeled that my toes are almost doubled over.

April 27, 1998
I meet Rosy, the tarantula that will be playing Charlotte the spider. Rosy's trailer is a large, moist, dirt-filled glass jar. Ken, her trainer, is having trouble coaxing her out. "She's a little cranky today," he observes.

Finally, she crawls up a piece of cardboard and onto his arm. "The important thing to remember," he says as he pats her furry back, "is not to get her irritated or she'll bite you."

"But she's depoisoned, isn't she?" I say hopefully.

"Of course not," says Ken, ho-ho-ho-ing. "How could we do that? But don't worry. If she bites you, you probably won't die. I mean, your arm will swell up, that's all." Then he reaches out his hand, and Rosy crosses over onto me. Her small furry legs crawl up my arm. I hold real still and try to think of my farm upbringing.

Rosy makes it up to the crook of my elbow and stops, resting.

"Well, I think she's had enough excitement for one day," says Ken.

"Yes," I agree, relieved. "We don't want to get her too stressed out."

April 28, 1998
Alexis Arquette plays Damien, my character's nerdy goth boyfriend. Today I'm glad I'm not Alexis. He has just spent five hours in makeup. Two local tattoo artists have done a bang-up job covering his body with scrolls and flaming skulls.

"I want your clothes!" I cry out when Alexis finally emerges from his trailer. All tattoos, silver claw rings, skull belt, and leather pants - he looks totally wicked.

"And I want yours," replies Alexis, who does famous drag shows as his alter ego, Eva Destruction.

"You can have 'em," I say in disgust. My dress seems to get tighter and my heels higher with every take. My flesh, struggling to escape, oozes out of every opening. The entire crew is on cellulite watch.

May 1, 1998
It's the first day of shooting with mechanical Chucky, and it's taking the doll a lot longer to kill Alexis's character than expected. Alexis finally comes back to the trailer, followed by worried F-X people. He is covered in blood. There is a huge rip in his prosthetic lower lip. The hair and makeup people frantically descend on him, trying to save his tattoos. Judy squeezes the wig in the sink, and quarts of blood gush out of the black hair.

"How was it," I ask. "Did you work with Chucky? What's he like?"

"It's hard to say," ponders Alexis. "He's got about seven different personalities. There are all the guys working different parts of his body. However as many operators as there are, that's how many different personalities he has. I just wanna know who's responsible for his left arm," he says, rubbing his chest.

Chucky had taken the opportunity to reach out and tweak Alexis's nipple.

May 3, 1998
Today is my first encounter with the mechanical Chucky. I arrive on the set totally unprepared for the experience.

The doll is lying in the bed, and it has just come to life. His mouth opens and shuts spasmodically. His fingers claw the air. His eyeballs roll around in their bloody sockets. He emits a wheezing sound as he breathes, like a slightly asthmatic child. From the bottom of the doll, a thick cord of wire leads to seven or eight men hidden behind a black drop cloth.

"Who's responsible for the left arm," I say by way of greeting. "Alexis warned me about you."

"We'll never tell," they chorus.

Sure enough, as the soon as the camera starts rolling, the left arm shoots out and furiously gropes my left breast. Chucky, like a lot of actors I've known, has another bad habit. Whenever he talks to me, he tends to stare fixedly at my cleavage. The cameraman, Keith, is always complaining. "Can Chucky lift his gaze a little? It doesn't seem like he's looking in her eyes..."

May 5, 1998
For the first time since the shooting began, I am miserable. I am trying to do a sexy striptease, and I have major dance anxiety. Ever since high school, I've thought I had poor hand-eye coordination. I covered this up by instructing my agents to claim I'm a wonderful dancer. I figure that once I get a few reels of film in the can, they can't fire me. And it worse comes to worst, they can always bring in Marine Jahan, Jennifer Beal's Flashdance double.

Right now, the crew is watching in stunned silence as I awkwardly gyrate, stumble, forget my lines, and almost fall over."

"They should have gotten you a choreographer," says makeup artists, Patricia, in that shooting it's-not-your-fault manner that makeup artists always have.

I grimly start the striptease, working to music now. The crew sympathetically turns away. Alexis's stand-in, who is chained to the bed, wiggles his toes to help me out. After take eight, Ronny comes running up. "We got it!" he says happily.

"We do?" Sweaty, I lower my feather boa. I just want to stop.

"It's very funny," insists Ronny. "It works. 'Cause Tiffany wouldn't be that good anyway. It's not like she's a professional dancer."

Nevertheless, I go over to the watch the monitor. It is funny, thank God!

May 6, 1998
Today, my last day on-camera, is in a bathtub scene, and my body is buried under bubbles all day.

I woke up with a tremendous migraine, and the Demerol I've snorted seems to have exacerbated it. The water is so hot, it's making me feverish. We have just finished shooting a scene in which Chucky throws a television into the tub and electrocutes me. Now he is leaning forward, staring at the massive mounds of bubbles.

It is making me nervous having Chucky stand so close to the bathtub. I can't help but focus on all the wires leading out of him to all the men with their joysticks.

"Is Chucky plugged in somewhere?" I ask. I would hate to be in a scene about getting electrocuted in a bathtub and then actually get electrocuted. It's not my goal to become a freak footnote in Hollywood history. Chucky, who has been idly trailing his fingers in the water, looks up at me, grinning, and wiggles his eyebrows.

Now I am lying underwater, waiting for the bubbles to settle over my head before I jump up and scare Chucky one last time. My lungs are bursting, and my head feels like its about to explode. Then I hear my cue: "Three... two... one... rise!"

I shoot out of the tub, streaming water, eyes wide and staring, fingers distended, nude bra slipping! Little Chucky is understandably terrified. "AaahAhhAh!" he screams, scrambling to get away. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen.

After my last shot, Myron, the first assistant director, calls the crew around. "That's a wrap for Jennifer!" he announces, and hands me a plastic bag full of presents - a bottle of Dom, a silver-star pendants, and a vintage lighter from the '50's with a "T" for "Tiffany" etched out in tiny faux rubies - presents that the crew chipping in to buy for me.

May 7, 1998
By a bizarre coincidence, Brad Dourif is on my flight back home. He had been in Toronto making another film, and is now on his way home.

"I just finished filming the Chucky movie," I say.

"What'd I tell you? Isn't it a great gig?" Brad says, "You film the entire lead of a movie in what... two weeks?"

Later on, as the plane takes off, I think of what he said. I'm already finished with the film, but everybody else has to work through July. When I think of all the hardships doll Tiffany has yet to experience - explosions, night shoots, sex scenes - I am happy to be leaving my prerecorded voice behind to do the rest of the work. I chucky to myself as I eat my complimentary peanuts: Child's Play is a great gig!