Spotlight Shines on Bruce Dern in the ‘Dark’

To the critics’ trumpet call that “Bruce Dern is back!” Dern replies in his reedy voice, “Where’ve I been?”

The 54-year-old actor has been gratefully reading the reviews for “After Dark, My Sweet,” a hard-edged thriller based on a novel by the long-neglected pulp writer Jim Thompson.

“A guy in Vanity Fair gave me glowing remarks,” Dern said, “but in the middle of it he said, ‘Mr. Dern has been absent from the mainstream movie scene for over a decade.’

“That almost paralyzed me. I just couldn’t believe it. I did almost a movie a year for the last 10 years. ‘The Burbs’ may not have worked on the level everyone wanted it to, but it was fun. ‘On the Edge,’ ‘That Championship Season’--those are not lightweight experiences.”

Such comments are minor annoyances.

“The nice thing about this film,” he said, “is that it’s not an unsimilar venture to what got me going 20 years ago at BBS, a small company that made million-dollar films (“Easy Rider,” “Five Easy Pieces,” “Drive, He Said”). Now Avenue is another small company that makes the 1990 million-dollar film, which is now a $5-million film. Last year it was “Drugstore Cowboy.” This year it’s ‘After Dark, My Sweet.’ ”

The film casts Dern as a scruffy ex-cop adrift in the California desert. A boozy widow (Rachel Ward) introduces him to a former boxer and mental patient (Jason Patric) who is conned by Dern into kidnaping the son of a rich Palm Springs family.

“One of the things that people seem to be appreciating,” Dern observed, “is that I’m not too far from the well. Uncle Bud has a lot of sleaze on him, a lot of little moves on him.

“If there is a ‘Bruce Dern role,’ this might be the ultimate. He’s not overtly savage, not an overt bad man. But he’s lurking in the area. I’d definitely ask for his driver’s license right away if I saw him.”

How did Dern get this way? He appears to be an upright citizen; His only addiction seems to be running, which he does for 15 miles, day in, day out.

“I began in television as an actor who worked,” he said by way of explanation. “I didn’t have a strong, individual, leading-man persona. The jobs I took in order to maintain any semblance of a career were roles in this (villainous) area.

“When you’re introduced into the movie business, they remember you in the first strong images they have of you. The images of me were always as bad guys in television shows or movies.”

And what bad guys! He was the man who shot John Wayne in “The Cowboys,” the crazy who attacked the Super Bowl in a blimp in “Black Sunday,” Jane Fonda’s war-crazed husband in “Coming Home,” the polo-playing cad in “The Great Gatsby.”

Dern is quick to cite some of his non-villainous movies: “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” “Smile,” “Middle Age Crazy.”

“But I don’t fight (type-casting) anymore,” he sighed.

Dern is doubly celebrating these days, for his own success in “After Dark, My Sweet,” and daughter Laura’s in “Wild at Heart.”

“It’s amazing,” he said with fatherly pride. “You have a daughter who suddenly explodes on the scene even though she’s been around for 10 years. It appears she just arrived in June.

“She’s what I call a ‘townie.’ Even though she grew up in the Valley instead of Beverly Hills or Hollywood, all of the kids who grew up here are townies,” he said. “Most of the actors in my generation didn’t come from L.A.; they came from other lands. Laura and her generation were around (films) all their lives.”

Does he give Laura any career advice? It’s not necessary, Dern said.

“She knows it’s a marathon. She got in knowing that in the marathon the race doesn’t start until you’ve done 16 miles. It’s what you do with the last 10 that counts.”