The Funny Story of How Donald Sutherland Ended Up in Kate Bush’s Cinematic 'Cloudbusting' Video

The entertainment industry mourns the loss of Donald Sutherland. The acclaimed Canadian actor died on Thursday, June 20, at the age of 88.

While Sutherland will undoubtedly be best remembered for his iconic roles in films such as Stupid and Hunger Gameshe certainly has a special place in the hearts of Kate Bush fans for his role in the music video for her 1985 single, “Cloudbusting”.

Like the song itself, the video was inspired by author Peter Reich’s 1973 memoir. Book of dreams, about his father, the Austrian psychiatrist and philosopher Wilhelm Reich. Specifically, the song and video revolve around the elder Reich’s experiments with his “cloudbuster,” a machine he hoped would create rain, and his arrest in 1956.

In the video, directed by ex-Monty Python Julian Doyle from a concept developed by Bush and Terry Gilliam, Sutherland played Reich, opposite Bush as his son.

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“I wanted it to be a piece of film, not a promotional video clip,” Bush told MTV in 1985. “I wanted it to be a short film that would hopefully do justice to the original book and allow people to understand the story. it couldn’t really be explained in a song.”

“So we wanted a great actor,” she continued. “We were thinking of Donald Sutherland.”

Donald Sutherland 1980 Paramount Pictures/ Courtesy: Everett Collection

But as he detailed in a 1985 edition of the Kate Bush Club newsletter, Sutherland initially had no interest in appearing in a music video.

“Barry Richardson, who was Nic Roeg’s hairdresser Don’t look now, asked me if I would do a music video with Kate Bush. I told him no and we went on to other conversations,” Sutherland said.

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The actor went on to describe meeting Bush a few days later when she knocked on his door at the Savoy Hotel in London. “I opened it. There was no one,” he recalled. “I heard a voice greeting me and I looked down. A very small Kate Bush was standing below. Barry told her where I lived. What can you do?”

According to Sutherland, Bush explained that the song and video were about Reich, whose work he was introduced to while filming Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Novecento. “Everything about Reich resonated with me,” he explained. “He was there then, and now he is here. Sitting across from me is the very eloquent Kate Bush. Synchronicity. Perfect. She talked some more. I said ok and we did ‘Cloudbusting’. ”

Donald Sutherland in the 1980s.

Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty

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“She’s wonderful, Kate Bush. Wonderfully. I love that I did it,” Sutherland continued. “I remember being in the car and on the hill and they took me, they took Reich, and I looked back out the back window of the car and I saw her, I saw Reich’s son Peter, standing there. And I remember the first morning on set I saw her coming out of her trailer smoking a joint and I warned her, saying she shouldn’t smoke it, it would affect her work, and she looked at me for a second and said no I didn’t I was straight for nine years and I loved her.”

“He was so encouraging and he made it so easy,” Bush told MTV about working with Sutherland. “Whenever we acted, he was my father. I simply had to react to him like a child. He made it very easy.”

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Source: HIS Education