Trivia

Dedicating it to the unfading memory of his grandma, Bylsma wrote, directed, and played "himself" in Elaine (2016), a short film that grapples with the difficult realities of dementia.

When initially auditioning for El Camino. Una película de Breaking Bad (2019), Chris had only a fake script where his character was playing video games before a gun was later pulled in the scene. Feeling like the tape needed a final touch, he took the video game audio of "RAGE" from the intro of Problem Dog (2011) episode 407, where Jesse Pinkman plays the first-person shooter while enduring flashbacks of Gale. Isolating as much of the game's score, sound effects, and in-game dialogue as possible from the scene, Bylsma edited that audio in underneath his performance so that - even for just an audition in the Breaking Bad universe - his character "Sean" would be playing the same game as Pinkman had. Two weeks later, he got the part.

If Night Comes (2014) was originally slated to be a structured improv mini-series directed by Bylsma within a larger series, just a few short episodes interspersed throughout the last-day-on-earth-themed webseries Withered World (2013). What began as a short concept starring Tosin Morohunfola as a filmmaker spending his last day documenting the lives of those around him, grew into an eleven-part series that was nearly entirely improvised, and later was re-edited and presented as its own stand-alone feature film. Bylsma states that this experimental style of filmmaking was a huge influence on him as a filmmaker and even going forward as an actor.

Before the scene was filmed for the series finale of Godless (2017) where Pastor Garret Moore arrives, Scott Frank shared the "Tis A Fear Thing" poem secretly with Chris Bylsma, and revealed that none of the series regular cast knew he was going to deliver this unscripted poem about Love at the funeral. Running three cameras at once, Frank was able to capture the authentic emotions of all the characters that were pouring out during the magic of that first "surprise" take of the scene.

When he was cast as Charlie Bowdre in Vincent D'Onofrio's feature film directorial debut The Kid (2019), Bylsma created & weathered his own version of the iconic picture of Bowdre with his wife, Manuela. Chris wanted to carry it with him throughout filming, as Charlie himself had carried it everywhere. In December of 1880 Pat Garrett and his posse mistook Charlie for Billy the Kid and killed him, and Garrett took the photograph from Charlie's pocket. To honor that "rea life cycle", when Bylsma wrapped on the film he left the handmade prop with Ethan Hawke, who played Sherriff Garrett in the film.