Behind the Scenes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974) with Marilyn Burns and Edwin Neal

Quite often people ask us where the female influences are. Of course, the only female influence is cadaverous there, but I don't know. I mean, we could come up with a lot of interesting kinds of things that emerge from that. Maybe it's just that Toby and I were rather diseased human beings for all I know. What happens to society without the influence or the feminine influence? We could have a heyday with that one, but I think I'll leave it to someone else. I was working as an illustrator at the time we were writing it, and I'd work during the day as an illustrator and then go over to Toby's house at night and we'd work a good portion of the night. In terms of the way I treated some of the characters in the films and writing the script, there was a case in Houston, and I'm not sure that it was ever called anything in particular, but the character that attracted me or that influenced some of the things that I did in the script was a guy named Elmer Wayne Henley. Do you want to go into the history of this deal, talk about this whole case? What had occurred was that Elmer Wayne was the procurer for an older man. Elmer Wayne would lure young men to the ghoul's kitchen, so to speak, and the older man and Elmer Wayne would participate as well, would have sexual relations with these young men, and then the young men would be murdered. There was actually a third young man that was involved that also acted to some degree as a procurer, as did Elmer Wayne. And what precipitated the police discovering what was going on was the murder of the second young man, and Elmer Wayne became fearful that the older man would murder him too, and so I believe he went to the police at that point. But subsequent to the discovery of all of this, the police were carting Elmer Wayne around the Houston area, and he was pointing out where all the bodies were buried or had been discarded along the various roadways. Somehow or another, the local news were following him around and were able to get very close to Elmer Wayne. And some news reporter in some little sketch I saw stuck a microphone in front of Elmer Wayne, who was like 17 years old, skinny little kid, and asked him how he felt about all this and what he was going to do now that he'd been apprehended. And Elmer Wayne kind of drew himself up to his full height, which must have been about 5'5 or 5'6, poked out his skinny little chest and allowed us how that he was going to take his medicine like a man. And it was just the kind of odd conjunction of the two senses of morality that struck me. Here was this guy had been involved in this horrendous serial murderer spree, yet he had imbued in him from some source the sense that if one did wrong, then one stood up and accepted one's punishment like a man. So it was kind of what I call a moral schizophrenia, and it employed it with some of the characters in the script. Warren Skerin, who I knew through Ron Bozeman. Ron Bozeman was a friend of mine. He and Warren had been classmates at Rice, and Warren at the time was the commissioner at the Texas Film Commission. And I went to Warren and brought the script to him, and he put it in the hands of a few people, and that generated some interest. We went around and solicited everybody we could think of who had more than a couple of coins to scrape together. I mean, even my younger sister invested a few bucks in it. We didn't really do any festival screenings, as I recall, not prior to getting a distribution deal. We had very, very few contacts. The world was a different place then than it is now. You have to recall that there was no video. Either you got a film into a theater or it just died and it was never seen. So you can imagine we were filmmaker wannabes with no contacts, essentially, in the industry. Very, very few. So it was very difficult to get it in front of anybody. At a certain point, Warren Skeram became involved, and he had developed some contacts as a result of having been the Texas Film Commissioner, and it was ultimately through some of his contacts that we did make a distribution deal. We were completely outside the mainstream of Hollywood, and we didn't know it at the time, but that was probably enormously beneficial. In retrospect, I think it was anyway. But what I have learned subsequently is that virtually anything that goes through that system goes through a process of homogenization. It's inevitable, and we didn't go through that. And so the very rawness of Chainsaw was unique, extraordinary, remarkable, and untempered by that process of homogenization. And I think that came through. I think that that was unique, and it worked. I mean, beyond that, you could have all those qualities, and the films could not work nonetheless, but the fact that it did and worked, I think, is largely responsibility for its enduring qualities. For one thing, we were all in Texas, and most of the crew was just straight out of film school. And, yeah, Texas was a separate country, and it considered itself that. And, of course, I'd gotten in a lot of scrapes in Texas when I was a kid with long hair such as that. And so, I don't know, I saw a lot of really eccentric behavior around me. And in particular, the local news in San Antonio was broadcast in Austin. It's like 70 miles away. And part of the film's inspiration came from their news, and it was so graphic. I mean, it was unbelievable. I mean, it was like car accidents in the aftermath. You know, the camera moving across brains and bones. The hitchhiker, the killer of the slaughterhouse, well, they all worked at the slaughterhouse, with the exception of Leatherface. He was just out there. He had just lost it. He went over the edge. It was during a period of time in the country where we ran out of gas. And it was that gas shortage where people lined up. And so that Watergate was going down. There was a lot of political things that were just happening in the country that just helped fix the film. I think what I was trying to say is, you know, this is America. This is my view right now. I should qualify it of America. And then the cook kind of skits this back and forth between, you know, he's doing his best. You know, he's a hardworking man doing his best to support these idiots out here. You know, he can't keep the brother off of the road from going to the graveyard or getting in trouble somehow, bringing dead chickens home or whatever. And so, you know, he's assumed that role, the cook, the leader of the, well, the only one who has any sense. What he skits is, when he gets a little taste of blood, something genetic fires off because he goes for it to the point where he catches himself. He embarrasses himself. You know, this attitude, this extra hunger that he has that he doesn't understand. He is another brother, but he acts, he takes the father's role. And then it's really interesting because I've been trying to, trying to, in fact, someone asked me a question a few weeks ago, the relationship between what, who they, why he calls the old man, old grandpa, and then where was father. And, but that was, that was his father. I mean, it was, it's kind of a common Texas thing, like the L were to be called, you know, old grandpa. When it came down to, to dressing the house, we put, the wallpaper was a little busy and a little bit, a little bit cheerful. I mean, not really, but subtly. And it was old, but, but so I, you know, I asked Bob to, to fix that. And he, he covered the, all the wallpaper with butcher's, butcher's paper. And then we went around with some like dry, you know, blood that would dry days before and would just put little splats here and there. And it added this strange texture. And then, and then it was the bone totems. I wanted that room that the Pam, when she, it's a little inside joke in there. Of course, when she kicks the bucket and trips and falls into the, into the bones, I wanted her to be total, so surrounded with, with bone and feathers and skin. And, and so that, that was the room we hung all the mobiles and the, and bones hanging on strings and such. And then the chicken and the birdcage making its, you know, tomorrow night's dinner, making its comment to her about the human remains in the room. I mean, that chicken plucking and rattling that cage during that scene was, yeah, I only, I just recently figured out that image, you know, why it was there. It's one of those things like a long time passes and he's in a black birdcage. It actually wasn't that difficult. It's a six minute long scene. Well, I mean, it's six minutes. It's a six minute long scene, including, I think, including going back to the house, discovering Grandpa Leatherface cutting the door down. It's this relentless chase that went all the way back to the Jim Cito and the barbecue stand and gasoline station. But, but, yeah, it was very interesting because we didn't have any woods out there. And, and we were on this place, I think it's called Rattlesnake Hill. And I guess there are rattlesnakes there. And, but we found like a patch of woods, like about maybe, maybe 50 feet across. And, and, and so all we have is 40 feet of dolly track anyway in a Western dolly. So, and, and nighttime hides all kinds of things, you know, so the chase at night. So it was, you know, I got out there thinking, how am I going to do this? And, and, and, and I turned around and I said, oh, that's a different shot. It looks like a different part of the forest. I turn over here and it looks like, oh, that's different. And so, you know, it was just a quick discovery that all you had to do to, to stretch space is just change the camera angle or move the dolly or change the lens size. And, and some of those long scenes of, of when they're running is they're on the same path running over and over again. And the lens size is changing, getting closer and closer. And then I'll bring them so I wouldn't have to make a, move the dolly track and then let them come right alongside the dolly and, you know, and, and, and gun up on them to get a lower angle of it. And it did, I, it takes, it took several nights, I, I, I think to do that. But it, it, it was so much fun. I don't think it was difficult. It was really important that, that for me, for the film to end when the sun is rising. And, and so I'll back up a little bit and tell you a story about that long scene from the time she exits the house or jumps through the window. And the hitchhiker begins to chase her. Then Leatherface joins in the chase. Then there's the, the business around the truck, I mean, where the hitchhiker is run over by the 16-wheeler and Leatherface. And it's a long scene, as you know, right up to the very ending of the film. And, and there is only one way to do that and make it look like it's dusk and the sun is coming up. Either you have to wait every day and shoot at magic hour, both morning and evening, or, or in Texas. I'll give you an image of what happened. We're, we're all standing there looking into the sky, waiting for the next cloud to come 100 miles, we figure. And hopefully it will go over the, you know, it will come, it will provide an overcast. I mean, it'll pass in front of the sun to our perspective and, and cast, you know, a minute or two maybe of overcast. So we'd jump right into, right into filming mode and we'd start shooting. So when it was cloudy, so that in the lab I could take, I could grade all of that down to a very amber color, so that I could have that last image of Leatherface with dancing with the sunrise. And then I needed that shot and of Leatherface dancing in front of the sun or doing something. It was something, you know, it was going crazy. I mean, it was, you know, it was Leatherface, he, you know, she got away. The old man's still in the house. He flips out. So anyway, so by the time we got around there, thank God, and then the same day, the sun was just right. And it was probably two or three takes of just, just go, go nuts. And then Daniel Pearl, hand-holding, would synchronize into that energy of Leatherface. And he would make his moves because he was, you know, somehow electrically connected to the action, to the scene. And so he would move around and the sun was in the background. It was like a couple of shots, I think. It's like a wider shot and then a tighter shot. And then it ends. It's thought to, it's interesting, it's thought to have a freeze frame at the ending, but it isn't. It's just the last image. When it cuts to black is, it's a powerful image when Leatherface dances toward the camera and part of his body. I mean, he's getting larger and larger and framing and the saw just goes up and, you know, cut to black. Buzz Knutson, who is like a seven-time Academy Award winner sound mixer. He just finished The Exorcist and mixed the film, actually. He mixed it twice. But as I was saying, it had already been mixed. And then this mistake was made in the conforming the original material. And that meant I had to go back to the flatbed and remove a frame from everything. Music, sound effects, dialogue. And compress, you know, two-thirds of the movie down by a frame, save for, say, the shot where Leatherface pops out. I just couldn't lose a frame. But if you'll look at that frame carefully, you'll see a line, you will see a splice on the last frame of that shot. Or maybe the first frame. I don't know if it was the first or the last frame, but I had to keep the frame in. And then I had to go remix the film. But it did give an opportunity to do some sweetening and making things a little scarier. Because the second time around, I needed a sound effect for when Pam comes into the dark room and you hear the birdcage rattle. Or you hear a rattle. Which was actually the bed springs squeaking from the foley work done with Reagan in bed, you know, from the exorcist squeaking. And so I was able to find these little pieces of magic, you know. This new group, Bryanston Films, showed it to them. They said, you know, instantly, you know, we'll buy it on the spot. So, I mean, they wrote a check out that was like three times more than the production cost. Which was attractive because, you know, and to me, because they get, you know, the investors get their money back. Which means another job, you know. And so it was a simple process. It went to the highest bidder and they wanted it. And then it went to the festivals. Then it was released. And after it was released, it started winning all kind of awards. Outstanding Film of the Year in London Film Festival, again. It was the hot ticket at the Kinzane, the director's fortnight at Cannes that year. And on and on. But that was after it was released. And Rex Reed gave it this incredible review. And apparently he went to see it like on 42nd Street or something. Or maybe it was the trans locks. It was all over. And he went with a couple. And this is a story that I've heard. He went with a couple and she was pregnant. Anyway, the pregnant lady got sick. Maybe like really sick. I don't know. Throwing up kind of thing. But then the next day, Rex Reed says, It's the scariest movie you've ever seen, such as that. And then it really took off.