The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: A Family Portrait (1988) - full transcript

John Dugan: The bottom line is that my sister was married to Kim Henkel.

I was doing a children's play in Chicago at the Goodman Theater.

Two shows a day, six days a week for $75 a week clear.

That comes down to, like, 12.50 a show or something.

And Kim called me up and said--

I had met him once, you know, at the wedding

and I had met him another time.

Didn't know him that well.

And called him, said that he had written a film

and they were doing it, and he said there was a part in it for me.

Could I come down? I immediately went down and quit the play,



and made arrangements to go to Texas.

Cat.

And I remember going to Doctor Bella Itkin,

she was a Russian woman

who was the producer of this children's show,

to go down and give my two weeks notice,

and she asked me what the film was.

I told her, and she asked me what the part was,

and I said it was a heavy makeup role.

And she had this Russian accent, which I can't do,

and she also had, like, one eye that went off weird,

and there was always sort of a little something running out of it over here,

and she said, "Roddy McDowell

"would have never have done "Planet of the Apes"



if he hadn't have been an established actor first."

That's what she said to me.

I said fine, I'm giving my notice anyway. And I went to Texas.

You act like a pack of animals.

We were just having fun.

You think this is a party?

Jim Siedow: I was doing a show-- We were doing a movie

up in Columbus called "The WindSplitter" which I had a part in.

I was a father of the young hippie

that went to California and came back

and the town hated him because he had long hair.

So there were three rough necks in it,

and one of them was Tobe Hooper. He was in the movie.

the movie came out and it didn't go very far.

I got a call one day from Tobe Hooper in Austin.

He said he was in-- I didn't even remember him.

Said he was gonna do a movie, and would I like to be in it?

And this was "Chainsaw".

Oh, I thought you was in a hurry.

Edwin Neal: And we got back to U.T.

about five minutes late for a class.

And they were tearing into the building,

and they said "Hey, where are you guys going?

Are you gonna try out for the movie?"

and we said, "What movie? What are you talking about?"

They said, "Well, they're shooting this movie."

Said, "Where?" They said, "In that room right there."

It was one of the main theaters at the U.T. Drama Department.

We said, "Sure, like they're really gonna make a movie here.

With us. Sure. You bet."

And so we poked our head in the door,

and somebody said, you know, "Are you here to read for the movie?"

And it was Tobe Hooper.

And we said, "Well, yeah. Oh, yeah. T-The movie, sure, yeah."

So he said "Come on in." And he looked at me and said--

Took his little cigar out and said, "Um, can you be weird?

I said, "Ha ha. Weird is what I do."

And my friend said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, he gives good weird."

So they said, "Okay, get up and be weird."

So they handed me the script

and it had one of the little scenes

from the Hitchhiker in there,

and the minute that I began to read the dialogue,

I knew this was my nephew.

I have a brain-damaged, paranoid schizophrenic nephew,

and this is the way he talks.

and I said my God, it's Paul, my nephew.

I said I can do this, so I did Paul my nephew.

Tobe took his little cigar out, said, "Whoa, that's great. That's great."

So then they called me back a couple of days later

and said, "Well, you were doing some real interesting things there.

Wanna make this movie or what?" Well, why not?

Gunnar Hansen: The summer that they started shooting,

I had, in fact run into a guy

who had played in "Of Mice and Men" with me.

And that's how I got involved with "Chainsaw",

was that we went in to have a cup of coffee in a drugstore,

and this guy who was a friend of his saw him,

came over and joined the conversation...

and then told me about this movie they were shooting,

and that they were still casting for the killer.

I called the casting director who was Bob Burns,

doubling as casting director in addition to doing his, uh, the effects,

and I went down and met him and talked to him for a while.

And then what happened was he just said

that he'd call me.

You know, they had other people to talk to.

And so I figured that was that they weren't going to call me.

Uh, about two days later, he called me

and said he wanted me to come down the next day

to meet the director and the writer,

so I went down and met Tobe and Kim.

And they asked me--

You know, I came in and they told me what the movie was,

and what the character was about,

and asked me if I was violent.

And I said "No,"

and then they asked me if I was crazy,

and I said "No,"

and then he said, "Well, can you do it?"

And I said "Sure, it sounds really easy,"

so they said, "Okay, you got the part."

And then, two nights later, we had a cast meeting

and I signed a contract.

And when I signed the contract, Tobe told me

that he'd actually decided he wanted me

when I came in the door because I filled the door.

I was told, and I don't know if it was Tobe as much--

If Kim Henkel was-- I don't know if he was credited for it,

but at the time, he was co-director, co-writer...

of the film.

At least when we were working on it.

I don't know how it's credited, but...

Somebody told me they were looking for embryonic,

an embryonic old man.

Somebody whose soul had reversed the cycle,

and they were, you know, an embryo.

And the other specific direction

I remember getting is...

during the finger-sucking scene...

with Marilyn.

One of them, either Kim or Tobe saying

"Have you ever seen a child nurse before?

"You know how when they get excited,

"they... start... you know...

Could you try, you know, maybe try that?"

He wanted to leave one halfway sane person

to get the thing across.

To keep it from being complete mayhem in there.

What are you doing?

You got no need to worry.

No!

Now, you just cooperate, young lady,

and we'll have no trouble.

And when we first started that scene,

not the scene in the truck, but the one in barbecue shack

where I'm beating Marilyn up with the club,

that was hard.

We started out, I couldn't do it.

And they'd keep telling me to make it look real.

"Hit her, hit her". And they couldn't use anything fake

'cause that looked fake.

So I'd start, and, "No, gotta hit her harder.

Hit her some more."

Marilyn's going, "Hit me. Don't worry about it." You know.

Of course, here I am, every time we try it,

she'd come out with a few more bruises,

and finally I got with it

and started really having fun doing it,

started really slugging her.

And we kept at it,

we did it eight takes on that.

And when he said it was-- We did eight shots on that.

He said when it was a take, she just fainted dead away.

Poor girl was beaten up pretty bad.

The Hitchhiker is one of the, you know,

one of the wackier members of the family.

He's-- They're in left field,

he's in the outskirts of left field.

He's further afield than they are.

He was always envisioned as the one that was,

you know, the furthest that that could go.

Like if the family had been inbreeding,

he's, like, two generations of inbreeding rather than one.

Like, Leatherface is probably one, you know,

but the Hitchhiker's more like two.

His father's, you know--

His father's father is probably his father, you know?

We're not real sure where he came from.

He has this weird birthmark, you know.

What the heck's that all about?

Come here, you nap-haired idiot!

No! No!

Where you been?

I've been out on the road!

You damn fool, you almost got caught over at Duke's!

No, no, they didn't see me.

They don't know nothing.

I told you to stay away from that graveyard.

The scene where Siedow is chasing me in front of the truck

and the artsy-fartsy lights behind,

and all of the smoke coming up,

it's not even smoke; it's dirt.

I mean, you know, in LA, they'd be on a soundstage,

and they'd have just the right amount of smoke.

Well, this really works because it's all natural elements here.

I'm groveling in the dirt.

The reason I'm groveling and trying to get down into the dirt

is because the stick that Siedow's punching me with is made out of hardwood.

And he was beating me-- I could hear me skull cracking inside my head,

and I'm going "Ah! Ah!"

And Hooper's over there, like, "That's great.

Great. That's great. Great stuff. Give me some more of that.

I said, you know, in between takes,

to him going, "Mr. Hooper, I think my ear is bleeding

"because this is like a hardwood thing.

Like, balsa would be good to do. We can dub the sound."

"No, no, no, no. Let me see."

And he walk over and he would hit his hand with it. "Nah, it's okay."

I said, "No, hit yourself in the head with it, creep."

That's where it hurts, in your head, it hurts.

You know, so, but we finished the scene.

We did, like, three or four takes with this hardwood stick.

But what bothers me about that

is to have gone through all this pain,

and then virtually have the thing in black and white,

you know, where you couldn't--

You don't see any of this, you know.

There's no great close-ups of this hardwood stick

coming down on my face you know.

Which, if it was on camera, would have been fine,

but nobody even knows. You know, they don't know.

Originally we had planned to have the character speak

at least some sort of gibberish that had some meaning,

so we had gone through the character--

through the lines so that I knew

what the meaning was supposed to be,

and, uh, of each time, you know,

the lines each time that Leatherface tried to speak,

and when we did it the first time,

Tobe stopped that and said, "No, that was too rational.

Leatherface wasn't that verbal. He couldn't talk.

And so we cut all that out because of Tobe's

perception of what Leatherface was like.

So he really defined Leatherface in a lot of ways.

I think the way I defined him for myself

was that in preparing for the part,

I went to the Austin State School,

which is, um, a home,

a large campus, for retarded persons,

and I spent several days walking around the campus,

pretending I was a student there. Or inmate.

And trying to pickup the physical mannerisms

of the way some people walked.

I didn't think there was really anything else

I could do because obviously the character

really doesn't have any lines,

and is there really only as a physical presence.

I thought that was really the only way

I was going to be able to define the character in any way,

so I spent enough time there

to try to learn how to walk a certain way

that I felt in some way presented this,

sort of, mental state of this guy.

And I went to a friend's farm for a while,

watched his pigs and tried to get them to squeal.

Since I was supposed to squeal like a pig.

I never did, I never could figure out a way to do it,

so the squeals and grunts that you hear

at the early on is really just-- It's dubbed in.

It's not-- It's not me at all.

The only sound I make is that sort of

groaning scream there when I killed Kirk.

Oh, God, the infamous dinner scene.

Lord.

The dinner scene stands out in my mind

as probably the most intense, the most incredible,

fantastically creative, labored, pregnant--

You know, it's all of these words rolled into one.

I mean, here was this table,

and all of this action going round and around this action,

which took, like, 30-something hours to shoot

with the same group of people.

And here was this table with this sausage

that had been on this plate for two and a half weeks

for continuity purposes. It couldn't be moved off.

They had these lights at about 8,000 degrees Fahrenheit

shining down on this stuff,

and the stuff is decomposing in front of your eyes

at four inches from your nose, right?

And here's a guy off stage with formaldehyde--

Literally, literally. You know, I don't--

Formaldehyde, putting formaldehyde in the sausage,

trying to keep it from exploding on the set.

And then there's this chicken head, right?

Burns had this great idea, takes this chicken head,

cuts the head off the chicken nails it to a board, right?

And then he nails the feet to the board,

made a little chicken out of it.

Looks great, but that sucker was just,

I mean, rotting right in front of you, man.

And, I mean, we were also... You know.

"Don't do that on camera. We can see you on camera wrinkling your nose."

Wrinkling my nose? I'm about to projectile vomit all the way to Peoria

Come on, what are we talking about?

But they had things over the window to keep the light out

because the light outside is going up and down

because we're there almost going into the second day,

so we've got a few light changes here,

you know, different times of the day.

So they got these black things over the windows,

and there's no air.

It's an old German farmhouse built in the 20s,

and there's no ventilation whatsoever.

Everybody's puking and pissing and moaning,

and we're going, "We're never going to be done.

This is going to go on into infinity."

You know, this is because a lot of these people,

you know, couldn't see the end of the tunnel, man.

They couldn't even-- They didn't even remember

anymore how they got on to the damn train.

Now, young lady, you just take it easy there now.

We'll fix you some supper in a few minutes, huh?

The heat was oppressive. it was awful.

I guess we're shooting day for night, whatever.

So it was supposed to be nighttime, but it was--

Actually, we were shooting around the clock at that point.

But it was hot, and with the lights, it was even hotter.

And all the meat was on the table.

The dinner sequence started sweating and cooking

and the flies and the smell of the place was unbelievable,

with all the bones in the front room,

which was right off the dining room area there.

And with the heat, and there was this mangy chicken

they had in a bird-- Like a parakeet cage,

they had a chicken stuffed in there.

The smell was awful.

Gunnar smelled awful. Just-- I probably smelled bad.

The smell was just overwhelming.

They ran long, long hours, and especially the last day

we shot that last scene, that thing ran 26 hours.

From the time we started to the time we quit.

Everybody was-- That was that dinner table scene.

Ugh. That was rough.

You know, we had to have all those meats and stuff,

and the skeleton was wired with the light bulbs.

Well, first the skeletons started burning

from the hot light bulb in it.

and if you think that's a bad smell-- Ooh, it's terrible.

And then, towards the-- Had all this--

And it was hot up there. It was hot as the devil.

And they had all these meats, cold meats and stuff that were--

They started going bad and smelling.

And that was it. People ran outside and had to go out

and regurgitate and come back in,

and it, uh, it was a little hairy there for a while.

I mean, I don't know how we particularly got pumped up for it.

I remember it as the hardest scene to shoot because

it was part of that 26-hour shooting session,

and we had to shoot that long because Grandpa,

we had only three faces for him,

so we had to shoot everything with him in it in three sessions,

and it was it, so we had to do

that dinner scene that day.

It was a real long scene to shoot

because it was a long scene,

particularly as we originally had it.

I mean, I think it's something like five minutes long.

And we had to shoot enough angles on it,

and we had to match the shots close enough that we had a lot of takes.

We actually shot the movie, I think in a pretty low ratio,

but that scene, I think the ratio was higher

because we had to get it exactly right each time.

we had to time it out well each time.

I think it was easy to get into the spirit of it

because it was daylight outside at that point,

so we were now probably 18 hours into shooting.

Uh... We'd--

It was something like 105 degrees outside.

With the windows covered, we had blankets over the windows

to make sure there was no daylight coming in,

and we had all the lighting in there,

and the entire crew in there.

You know, it had to be 115 degrees in that room or hotter.

And the food was rotting fast.

We had to keep changing the headcheese

because it would start to turn right away.

I mean, an hour into shooting,

and it was smelling so bad, we had to switch it out.

And so I think it was very easy for the scene

to be very intense because we were all overheated

and we all smelled bad, and, you know,

and the food smelled awful, and, you know--

Probably nobody liked each other at that point anymore,

you know, so it was easy to squabble and fight.

As I said, you know, that was the scene

where I finally lost-- Sort of forgot myself

and got very involved with killing Sally.

You know, I had that moment when...

when Ed is yelling, "Kill her! Kill the bitch!"

And where I'm thinking, "Yeah, let's get her. Let's get this over with".

Get her!

Kill that bitch!

It was like it's own major amphetamine, you know?

It just got crazier and crazier and crazier.

You know, you're sitting here at 4:00 in the morning,

talking about hitting people in the head with hammers.

What's the best way we can depict the hammer coming down the back of the head.

And these are grown men sitting in a room

discussing this like it was some kind of,

you know, scientific tenet that they're working on here.

You know, "Where should we have he hammer, you know?

"Well, what angle are we gonna have

that it's gonna fall into the bucket just right?"

Grown men sitting in a room talking about hitting a woman

in the back of a head with a steel hammer.

And people sitting calmly, going, "Yes, I think that would work."

Unreal.

Actually, until we got into that...

dinner sequence, I don't think anybody involved

knew that was even in the film. Or very few people.

I roomed with Lou Perrymen, he's now Lou Perry,

who was the assistant director or second camera maybe...

on the film, we roomed together at Austin.

When he found out he was rooming with me,

he said "Oh, you're in this film?"

'Cause they hadn't started shooting my scenes yet.

'Cause I'd been out on the set,

and I was running errands for Tobe,

picking up props and things.

And he said, "I thought you were just a little observer."

It was fun.

It's a lot of fun to run around like that.

To just let yourself go and do that, it really was.

Leatherface has three faces.

For the dinner scene, he put on what we call the pretty woman face.

And I think the idea was that he was all dressed up,

and this was a big dinner party, so he was gonna put--

be on his best behavior, you know.

Taken Grandma's apron off.

He wasn't in his domestic role anymore,

so he wasn't playing Grandma anymore.

He puts on a pretty woman face.

In that very long dinner scene,

uh, when they are getting ready to kill Sally,

what happens is, and what was cut out

was that Leatherface gets up

during a lot of that fussing around the table

and wanders into the neighboring room

and puts on makeup.

And there's a shot where he's--

I mean, the face is already made up,

but he starts really slathering on the lipstick

and the rouge and stuff.

I think you can tell if you can look at the face

the first time you see it, and then look at it later

when he's running out the door,

that there's a lot more lipstick and rouge

on the face then there was in the beginning.

And I guess the idea was that Leatherface is so--

That he almost takes on the personality

of the face that he's wearing.

That's whatever personality Leatherface has is whatever mask he happens to have on.

And the idea was that he was going to be,

you know, all primped up for dinner.

You know, they were having guests for dinner.

That particular scene that was perhaps

one of the most difficult scenes to shoot in the film, which was cut.

The Hitchhiker's been run over by this massive, huge, 18-wheeler truck.

and he's been tossed unceremoniously about 50 feet in the air

and flopped down on the side of the hot Texas road, lying there in a heap.

Well, in shooting the scene, there they were.

They had me lying on this--

You ever seen those things on CNN where they, you know--

"I'm here today in Peoria," and they take the egg

and they dump it out of the glass on the sidewalk, and it starts to cook.

Everybody gathers around. "Wow, the egg is actually cooking."

Because the asphalt is so hot.

Lying on the asphalt, I could hear--

I could hear in my ear, which was right next to the asphalt,

right next to the skin, I could hear my own skin cooking.

But being very young at the time,

and not having the sense to stand up and say,

"Hey, wait a minute! My skin's cooking here."

Being a young actor and trying to do the right thing and keep the production going,

I lay there on this asphalt until my skin cooked,

because what they were doing, they were waiting for a cloud--

Remember now, there was a .001 mile an hour wind.

You know, nothing happening, right?

And this cloud is moving in front of the sun ever so slowly.

Well, because the light doesn't match the previous scene,

we have to wait for the cloud to go away from the sun

so that that light will match the light

that they used in the previous scene.

Well, so everybody's sitting here and waiting for the cloud to go away.

Ed is laying on the asphalt,

450 degrees Fahrenheit, and his skin is cooking.

And I thought, "Well, gosh, it looks--"

Oh, I almost left out, there's a woman

with about four gallons full of Karo syrup blood

pouring it into my mouth every ten seconds

so that it will ooze correctly

'cause I've been-- Now my jaw's been broken, right?

By the impact of the truck.

And the only way that they could get the jaw

was to prop it up with something.

Well, in the history of B grade movies,

we don't want to get some kind of expensive $400 mouth joist,

so use this flat rock, which is more or less round on most of its edges.

and they cram this underneath my jaw like this

to give it that look of a broken jaw.

So we've got the jaw being protruded through with the rock,

we've got the Karo syrup in the mouth,

we've got the 450 degrees Fahrenheit things,

and then later I find out they didn't use the scene.

First time we shot Gunnar and Ed bringing me

down the stairs in my rocking chair,

we hadn't really tried it out.

and it was, like, "Oh, let's go get Grandpa,"

and then Leatherface and Hitchhiker run up to get Grandpa,

and they carry me down,

and I don't remember who was on the bottom and who was carrying the top,

but whoever was on the bottom was moving faster

than the person on the top could move,

so the chair slanted down,

and I was just not supposed to move.

I was supposed to be, like, zoned out.

And I started sliding because the chair was, like, in a 15 degree incline.

So I start sliding, sliding,

and nobody says anything.

Tobe doesn't say to cut, Danny Pearl's still shooting,

and the guys are still going down the stairs.

I keep sliding, sliding, sliding.

Finally, I slide this, like, you know,

completely out of the chair, and still nobody says anything.

So they stop and whoever-- I think it might've been Ed at the bottom,

was trying to stuff me back up in the chair,

and finally, the three of us, the actors started laughing,

and Tobe said "Cut, cut. Print that, I'd like to see it.

"It'll be good for the outtakes.

Ten years from now we'll get a kick out of that."

There was a problem in figuring out how to do it

because she was wearing such short pants,

and she had a halter top on.

So what they ended up doing was they made a harness for her

out of nylons, out of stockings.

And she wore it around each leg,

and I think around her waist

so that she would carry the weight that way.

And then from the harness, they ran a wire up her back

for the hook to go onto.

So what would happen is, you know, we shot it

so that looking at it from above, you see her being picked up

and her back approaching the hook.

Then I put her down and she put the harness on,

and we flipped the hook around

so that the hook wasn't pointed at her.

I picked her up again and we threaded the loop on the harness

under the hook, and I picked her up well past the hook

so that the next angle from behind me, over my shoulder,

when I bring her down, and it looks like the hook brings her up short,

What's happening is the harness

is just catching the bottom of the hook and that stops her short,

it looks like the hook dug in.

And it really works because I still wince when I see that scene,

even knowing how it's done.

You know, I think it's a good logic lesson in film making

is that it's horrifying and gruesome not because

you ever see the hook go in, but because you see

her reaction to the pain of the hook.

The implication in "Chainsaw" is one of it's strongest things.

I have won bet after bet after bet

of people who have seen the film once, maybe twice,

betting me that you see the hook go through the girl.

You do not see the hook go through the girl.

But they will, "Of course you do.

The hook goes right through. It's a great shot."

You see him setting her down on the hook,

but what your mind does is finish the image.

It finished it, you know. It finishes it for you.

Your mind does. It's inevitable

if you have any imagination whatsoever.

and so they'll bet me that, and they'll also bet me

that you see Paul Partain

cut in half in the wheelchair.

You never see anything except Leatherface.

We shot that scene with a metal sheath around my leg

to keep the chainsaw from cutting into me,

and then put a steak-- Taped a steak down and taped a blood bag over that,

and actually cut into that.

And they originally-- What they told me they were gonna do,

was when they explained the scene to me,

they were gonna have one of the crew use the chainsaw on me.

I'm gonna fall on a midshot,

then it cuts to a close-up of the chainsaw cutting into my leg.

So they said we'll just have one of the crewmen run the chainsaw.

And I said no, that I would run the chainsaw

because I didn't trust them to know, you know,

when they were going to cut into me.

So we did it and we used the chainsaw

with the teeth cut off, and it didn't work.

It wouldn't cut through the pants.

So we had to redo it with the teeth on the saw

to be able to cut the material.

And that's a real-- That shot is very real to me

because when we shot it, the saw cut very quickly

through the cloth, the blood bag, the meat,

and hit the metal sheath and burned through it.

I mean, it didn't-- I mean it heated up

the metal sheath and burned me.

And for a quick instant, I thought I had been hit with the chainsaw,

and I let out a yelp and pulled the saw away and grabbed the spot

because I thought I'd been cut,

and looked down as this spurt of blood

comes up through the bag, through my fingers from the blood bag.

You know, it was all quite real.

It worked very well.

In fact...

a friend was on the set for that scene,

and she got so cranked up during the scene that when--

Had been on the set long enough

to, I think, pick up some of the lingo,

so that when that shot was finished,

she yelled out first, "It's a print!"

And Tobe sort of looked up at her

and nodded and said, "Yes, that's a print," and we used it.

No, it was hard for me to do at the start.

It really was.

I just couldn't get into beating somebody with a club,

but try it enough, and they keep yelling at you,

go ahead, so, I really got with it.

And then the truck scene followed.

Of course, I don't know why they did that.

When we rehearsed it, there was nothing in the bag.

Nobody was in it.

Then they wanted to start shooting it.

They put a girl in the bag.

That took a while to get used to banging her.

So that came out all right.

I hope you're not too uncomfortable down there.

And here's where we show just how far this guy'll go.

I mean, he grabs a knife and he cuts his hand

at a moments notice.

Um, self-mutilization

has always intrigued audience people

because as an audience, when you see somebody blown away

or shot, with all of the pyrotechnics that we have at our disposal now,

it's just more movie making because we've been brought up

for years and years and years to accept that.

But self-mutilization, particularly on a bare arm,

you see, it's almost documentary-like because

it's right there in the palm of his hand.

There's no cut away.

It's a simple theatrical trick.

But still, it looks very immediate and looks very real,

and it's very large, and it's right there in front of the camera.

The guy who did the makeup, Dr. Barnes I think was his name,

was a plastic surgeon.

Wasn't really a makeup guy.

And he had made two masks. Liquid latex.

And so the second time-- The first time they put it on,

it took them seven hours to put the makeup on alone.

And then we shot for 12, maybe.

In the second time, they only had one more mask for me,

which they cut up into sections,

put on in sections, but with spirit gum.

And so the second time, they wanted to shoot myself

and Jim Siedow out because they couldn't afford to pay Jim anymore,

and they didn't have a third makeup mask to use for me.

So I was in makeup for, I think 26 hours.

And this was Texas in July. It was really uncomfortable.

They couldn't change my clothes.

They had only one set of clothes for me.

And the shirt had been run through

a washer machine with some dye to get it the right color for the film,

so we couldn't even wash my shirt

because we were afraid, or they were afraid that the color would change.

And we couldn't have the suit dry cleaned

because they were afraid that if the dry cleaner lost it or anything happened to it,

we would never be able to replace it and get it to match,

so I had to wear the same clothes throughout the entire shoot.

And that, including the shirt, and at that point, you know,

we're three and a half weeks into the shooting,

and I know that there was more than one person

who did not like to sit next to me when we had dinner

because I think I was pretty ripe myself.

And the script was just a bare outline almost.

And there's one scene in there...

they claim has become famous.

Is it, I don't know, that line where I say,

"Look what your brother did to the door."

Look what your brother did to the door!

He's got no-- No pride in his home!

That's supposed to be a great, great historical line in movie making now.

That just came about.

Running around there, might as well lay it on,

so we layed it on.

For Ed Neal and I, we had the parts to do it with.

I have to admit, unless you have a tremendously good script,

unless you have a Kasdan or a Brooks

or somebody like that writing you a really good script,

I have to admit, if I have my choice,

put me out there on that set with no dialogue at all,

where it simply says in the script,

"Hitchhiker runs up and grabs Sally."

Now, that's all it says in the script,

but, you know, you could have 100 different guys

run up and grab the girl,

but my idea was to whip out my razor,

and instead of grabbing her, trail behind her,

whipping with the razor behind her.

Instead of catching her, he just cuts her to ribbons.

Earlier in the shooting, when we were shooting the chase scene in the woods,

I was wearing throughout the whole movie,

I was wearing cowboy boots, which they had put new heels on

so that they were very high to make me taller.

I'm 6'4" and they-- I think with the heels,

I was something like 6'7".

And so I was wearing these boots

that had slick leather soles and very high heels.

And earlier in the shooting, I had fallen.

In fact, it's on the film just before that,

when I'm running through the woods

and Leatherface does his little skip in the woods,

the reason for that is I was just getting ready to turn.

The trail that I was running on turned sharply there,

and I figured somehow that my boots were gonna dig in,

and so I did that quick skip to dig my feet in to make the turn,

and I when I turned, my feet when out from under me,

and I landed on my back and the chainsaw went up in the air...

out of the range of the lights,

and I couldn't see anyway very well out of the mask,

so I rolled over and covered my head and waited for it to land.

And, uh, so, because of that,

and I think the fright we all got

from having this running chainsaw land beside me,

in the scene where I'm chasing her through the house,

the only way I was gonna make that turn without falling down

was to to do that little turn, sort of keystone cop

sort of skid to make the turn and go around.

I ended up over at an apartment with Kim

in the middle of the night drinking beer,

and they were rewriting constantly, constantly

through the whole thing, and I do remember them one night,

sitting up and drinking beer and trying to figure out--

Trying to write a scene to get Marilyn's blouse ripped off.

Just because everybody was so enamored of her...

torso, let's say.

Which never came across, because believe it or not,

Tobe was worried about rating,

about being able to get it on television.

I remember going into the first time I went to see rushes,

and Tobe had Danny Pearl,

who was first camera on it,

had him taping off the steam deck.

You know, and I said to, I guess Lou Perryman,

I said, "Why's he doing that?"

He said, "We want to see what it's gonna look like

when they cut it down for TV."

I said, "Well, if he thinks

he's gonna get this thing on TV, he's nuts."

There were a couple of times

when I felt... very strange.

It was inevitably late at night

and it'd be, like, you know, two, three in the morning,

and I'd be sitting there, getting made up,

and in the still Texas night you could hear

Marilyn screaming.

And it was just a real strange kind of--

I'd look in the mirror, there was this strange person there

with a huge face-long purple red birthmark on his face,

and sores all over his face, and--

I had this big knife and this, you know--

Screaming and sweat and the air was absolutely still.

And then Gunnar would come in from having shot

and run back and forth, being a large person,

running back and forth for hours, almost physically exhausted.

Sweat pouring from every inch of his body.

And it became kind of a Twilight Zone-ish,

you know, now it's my turn to chase her.

You know, now's my turn to do this.

And a great many of your actions being based on,

more or less, actions you've never done before.

You know.

It becomes, in your imagination...

how do you complete that image

in your mind, for the camera, for whoever,

of what it is they're asking you to do?

And it became very unreal at times.

You know, and I thought, gosh, you know--

As you look down and you see the ropes

that you just tied around Marilyn Burns,

friend and actress, but all of a sudden

a non-real thing in front of you

that you've been asked to jiggle up and down,

truss up into an immovable mass.

Where do you stop?

You've been asked to do it as well as you can do it

to the highest pitch that you can do it at,

and the higher pitch you get it to,

you see all the faces of all of the other actors

and all of the crew people and the director

and the assistant manager and they're all there,

and the more you do it, the more excited they get

in a kind of voyeuristic kind of sense.

But when you look down and you see the flesh

of the actress separating because the rope is too hard,

and there's nothing she can do about it

because she's tied in the chair and there's a rag gag in her mouth,

there's a little tiny light that goes on in the back

that says, "Hey, wow. We need to back off this sucker or what?"

When you're involved with a project like that,

particularly if you're visible, like being the killer,

you get blamed for a lot of societies problems.

So there have been all kinds of complications.

Just looking at that complication, a number of years ago,

probably in 1975, maybe '76,

very shortly after the film had come out,

I was at a chamber concert,

and during the intermission,

this Philadelphia dowager comes up to me and is talking

and says, "You know, Gunnar, there were 12 people

murdered today in New York City and it's your fault."

And, you know, I--

You know, you're usually made speechless by a comment like that,

but I think a lot of people think that movies like that

are the cause of a lot of problems...

when I think they're symptomatic of some societal issues,

and to my mind, though I'm no psychologist,

they're probably harmless or at least let people

work through some misery.

So I get a lot of that. Not a lot, but I get some of that,

people who think somehow

I'm supposed to feel responsible for a lot of the misery in this world.

My answer is that the misery is there,

the film simply uses that misery.

I think still, to this day, it's not that violent a film.

It's not-- There's very little blood and death that happens in it.

I think. Particularly compared by today's standards.

I don't think there was at that time either.

I think that the one scene when I first saw it,

you know, I saw it in the Chicago theater,

on State Street in Chicago,

and the first time I saw it in the theater,

and about 20 of us went.

We all met there and we had a party afterwards

with Bloody Mary's--

Opening night party for "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

with a big punch bowl filled with Bloody Mary's.

And, uh...

The scene where a lot of people got up,

and that's a big theater, and started walking out

was the scene where Terri McMinn gets hung on the meat hook.

Which I still think is probably the most violent scene to happen in the film.

Because when Paul gets killed, it's all from behind.

You know. Aah! This stuff.

And it's all shot from behind.

And Bill Vail gets hit in the head with a sledgehammer

and shakes around a little bit,

but there's no, you know,

the cow entrails, or the bag with the--

You know, none of that stuff happening.

The way they keep saying, it was the forerunner

of the modern day horror films, and it led to a lot,

and it was great being in on it.

Never--

They never let you forget about it.

Shoot, you could've been in "Gone With the Wind" or something,

and tell somebody "Gone With the Wind"--

"Aw, so what."

But you mention "Chainsaw",

ah, the thing still lives on.

Really, just lives on and on.

Used to get calls from all over the country,

from England, from Germany.

How they found out where I lived or my number...

One time I thought, after that show came out,

of getting an unlisted number, 'cause boy, I was getting calls

that were, "Man, how did you do that?"

"Man, how did you--"

I'd ask them, "Where you calling from?"

If it was Houston, I was gonna hang up and leave town for a while.

Being that caught up in it

and never, of course, seeing the film as a whole,

while we were doing it, being in the middle of it,

I don't think we ever really realized what we were making.

I mean, I didn't realize it because I was just some schlep on the set.

I didn't have this overview,

I didn't know what Tobe's notion was or his vision was,

so I don't think I ever realized, sort of--

realized what this film was going to be,

or what it was what we were making.

And the thing that helped us a great deal

was the 115 degree Texas weather,

which by the time you got a pound and a half of sweat in your eyes,

and your mouth and your nose and your clothes were all sweaty,

they hadn't been washed in six weeks.

It got easier and easier and easier as we took on

the environmental aspects of the family to become the family.

Easier and easier.

We were around the kind of food they were eating,

we were around the clothes they wore,

we were in the smell they were in.

I mean, it was in the air, so it became easier and easier and easier.

Man: Quiet!

You act like a pack of hounds.

We were just having fun.

You think this is a party?

I feel sad that I didn't make any money.

Also, in '74 there was-- In France, there was a T-shirt

going around with my picture on the front of it.

You know, I was like a cult hero in France, Grandpa.

So the popularity worldwide is unbelievable.

And I got a postcard or a picture somebody took in Tokyo

of a marquees in front of--

I don' have it anymore, I don't know where it is,

but a marquees in front of a theater

where Grandpa was the whole thing.

This huge picture of Grandpa.

You know, so not just in this country,

worldwide it was a pretty amazing phenomena.

When I read it, all right,

well, it's a class A B drive-in movie, you know?

And... I didn't take it too seriously.

I didn't even dream the thing would--

Nobody dreamed the thing would come out like it did.

And, no, I was just there. I was having a lot of fun doing it.

And really, I didn't have any great expectations.

I didn't even think it'd get to be shown, to tell you the truth.

I figured it was one of these movies that,

you know, two or three years from now,

there will be a few horror film freaks

who really like this movie because it's gruesome.

And that would be it, you know.

It'd be right up there with "Bucket Of Blood"

or, you know, one of those.

So I really didn't expect anything to happen,

plus it was more than a year before the film was released.

It was released in October of '74 and we shot it--

we finished shooting in September.

We shot it in August and the beginning of September of '73.

So we spent a year waiting and we-- we'd virtually given up,

I mean, we thought maybe there never will be a movie.

you know, that-- that this is all, you know, it died somewhere.

And we were actually a little bit surprised

when they got in touch with us and said,

"We're having this press party in Dallas,

will you come up for it?"

Once the film was released,

again, at first, it was just a movie.

I mean, we had a party for this-- for this screening, for the premier,

which we got into for free because we convinced them

that we were-- had been in the movie,

you know, and they-- they let us in.

Um...

I don't think I realized that this movie was gonna have any long-- long term affects,

any lasting affect, until a couple of weeks after the film came out.

I went up-- I took a friend of mine to show her the house,

and-- that we'd shot this stuff in and we-- we pulled up,

and walked over to the fence and we're standing there looking at the house,

and this car pulls up and three teenagers get out,

and they walk over to the fence and they're looking at the house, too.

and one of them turns to me and says,

"You know, that's where they made that movie."

And I said something like, "Oh. Oh, really?"

And then they got in and drove off,

and that's the first inkling I had

that this movie was gonna affect people.

Well, my life wasn't affected by "Chainsaw" right away.

It was only after it became a cult movie

that it began to affect it.

And it's, you know, it's like--

it's something that you just will live with

for the rest of your life, you know,

it's not like you can stop being the Hitchhiker, you know.

It's like-- well, I don't want to be the Hitchhiker anymore

because that's, you know,

but it-- it's real interesting because now there are several

producers, directors, who think,

"Oh, that's all he does is those kind of roles."

When that's the only thing of that nature besides "Future Kill,"

which was a direct outgrowth of having been in "Chainsaw,"

You see, I would never have done "Future Kill"

without having done the "Chainsaw" role.

See? Because it was offered to me

because of the "Chainsaw" thing.

But, for example, very few-- a-- a lot of casting directors

that don't know me, not from the Southwest

'cause the ones from the Southwest know,

but, you know, other people from other parts of the country

are astonished to find out that

I've done, you know, ABC TV movies with Mariette Hartley.

I've got commercials running on "World's Greatest Commercials."

I have done three and a half years with a comedy group called Esther's Follies.

Six shows a week, all sold out.

You know, they're, "He does comedy?"

You know, that kind of-- But, wow, you know, that's great, you know.

But it's-- it's-- once you get typed, you know,

it's very difficult, especially if you do it correctly,

In fact, "Chainsaw 2," people would come by wanting autographs

from "Chainsaw" one.

And fellas that had these huge, beautiful posters

that I had never seen before that were made in Germany,

in France, in Italy,

you know, in-- with our pictures on 'em all in German, all in French.

I saw one--

I saw one taping with Japanese dubbed in.

And you think we weren't funny with Japanese dubbed in.

Should have shown it that way all the time.

Oh, that was funny.

When a friend of mine introduced me to a woman

who was very impressed by the fact that I was a movie star,

you know, big "M", big "S",

and wanted me to take her to see this movie

and I had, you know, real fantasies about where this was gonna go

and, of course, where it went was to a locked door.

I mean, she-- we went to this movie,

and she was very delightful and excited,

and I was all pumped up thinking this was gonna be great.

And we went to this movie and I think as I put it in the article,

she was curiously silent on the way home.

and was not very talkative and-- and as we walked to the door said,

"Thank you. I had a nice time."

Stepped through the door and slammed it in my face.

And I think, at that point, I realized that

I wasn't gonna capitalize on this movie.

Sally, I hear something. Stop.

Stop.

It's always amazement, for one thing,

because I-- I play a role that,

for one thing, it's usually disbelief because it's like, yeah, yeah,

anybody could say they played Grandpa,

you know, with all the makeup and everything.

And then once they're convinced, it's just...

amazed or admired.

There's a guy that I just started working with,

a new waiter that they just hired, like, three days ago,

who overheard me talking to one of the other waiters

about you guys coming to talk to me,

who said, "Are you serious you were really in

"Texas Chainsaw Massacre?"

I said, "Yeah." He said, "That is my all time favorite movie of-- ever."

You know. Started asking me all these questions,

pumped me for questions for, like, an hour.

So, I get a lot of admiration.

There are a lot of people who just...

think it's wonderful.

You know. And don't understand why I'm not a multi-millionaire.

I think the popularity of "Chainsaw" is perhaps deserved

because it was a creative effort

on a great many people's parts.

From the production manager and the editor and the--

and the cinematographer and the director and the scriptwriter,

and the actors and the crew people.

I think it was, you know, because you got to do more things on a set like this

than you could ever even begin to discuss on a regular feature film.

You know, you had crew members doing jobs, you know, there's a great deal of-- of crossover

you know, and so you get to suggest things.

Grips could suggest the lining up of a shot.

You know, you can't do that on a regular feature film.

If you did that in Hollywood, they-- they'd send two, you know,

two guys out to take your kneecaps off and have 'em roasted for lunch,

you know, that kind of thing.

But-- so you have all this creative energy and all of these ideas

and all of this stuff flowing together,

and because there wasn't a big long background of,

this is the way we make movies, see,

there wasn't a lot of the cliches in there that you usually see.

There was some very ingenious working out of shot angles.

It was a very learn by doing kind of thing.

So you get this kind of documentary type style filmmaking

because that's the only way they could figure out how to do it.

So it looks very, you know, hand-heldish,

very, uh, "Gee, they had a TV camera out that day

shooting this weird family."

it takes on a very-- And you have actors that are taking chances

because there's nobody telling them not to.

There's nobody saying that's too much for the screen.

You know, so it's popularity is based a great deal

on seeing things that you haven't seen before.

These characters are much more interesting, I find,

much more real than the characters in "Psycho".

I mean, three fourths of the characters in "Psycho",

the original "Psycho" are cardboardish.

You know, you've got the woman, the people at the restaurant.

You know what I mean? They're just your regular stock people.

We don't care what happens to these people.

These people aren't interesting.

You know, Anthony Perkins' character was kind of interesting

because he's not doing the same old stuff,

and he was doing a great job acting.

But you know, outside of that.

But the popularity-- I've seen people watch it

that say, which is interesting to me,

"Ooh, that's my favorite horror film,

and I don't usually like horror films."

I hear that over and over and over, across the country.

East coast, west coast, Florida, you know, all over the place.

And what that says to me is that it wasn't

made like a typical horror film,

and there's something immediate there

that these people are picking up on.

That isn't there in "Blood Feast", you see?

"Blood Feast", this thing, you know,

the Herschel Gordon Lewis stuff was just, you know,

interesting and fun and campy,

but it's not real, you know?

It's not real like "Chainsaw" is real.

"Chainsaw" is one of the only real horror movies ever made.

I don't know if we'll have another one or not,

but I'd keep playing it, yeah.

Yeah. But, uh...

Of course, see, I can do all kinds of characters.

I don't want to be stereotyped as that type of character.

Really, I'm a lover.

It won't hurt none.

Our old grandpa's the best killer there ever was.

The other side effect, as far as the negative side effects of my life,

the fact that a lot of people

think "Chainsaw" jokes are funny,

and believe me, after 15 years, "Chainsaw" jokes are not funny,

and I still get "Chainsaw" jokes.

I still get people coming up to me in bars

making chainsaw noises, or calling me up at night

and saying, you know, "I wanna talk about this movie"

when they won't even tell me who they are.

And I think that's sort of silly.

A lot of people also think that

I am the personality of Leatherface.

That I am brutish, you know, that I am--

Nasty, brutish, and tall,

and that somehow all I did was call upon my inner self

to, you know, bring that to the surface to make this character,

and that I'm some horrible creature,

and they're not gonna let their children

come to my door on Halloween.

I've got about 20 minutes on camera there.

At least. Don't say a thing.

Don't do a whole hell of a lot, but I do it well.

I did it very well.

Sort of like now. My life, I don't do a lot,

but what I do, it's quality.

But it really isn't the biggest thing in my life.

I guess it's because people think if you do something you're well known for,

that fame is what defines what's important to you.

I don't know how to say that well, but...

If you do something that people recognize you for,

that whatever you do after that that's not public

can't be as important, and I think that's unfortunate,

'cause that's not the case. I mean--

Doing "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

was certainly not the biggest thing in my life,

either personally or professionally.

And I'm glad I did it.

But I don't want it to be the center of my life,

and I think it is for a lot of people.

People always bring that up as somehow the big thing,

and to me, I think it's unfortunate

that I'll probably be remembered for "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

before I'll be remembered for anything else,

and I think that's really unfortunate.

It'll probably say, "Gunnar Hansen, He was Leatherface"

on my gravestone.

No, I didn't see "The Chainsaw Massacre"

the first time 'round.

I'm often out of the country.

And by the time I got back, it was gone,

so I had to wait four or five years

till we had a revival of it here on Hollywood Boulevard.

By then, it had become kind of a cult classic,

and since I'd seen everything of this nature

since I was five and a half years old back in 1922,

I thought it was high time that I catch up with it.

Well, I must say I was staggered by what I saw on the screen.

It was so realistically done

that it seemed more like a documentary

somehow or other to me than a film of fiction.

I think it was probably a watershed work

in that it brought a new dimension

of reality to horror films.

To me, it seemed as though it was

really happening in that house,

and with the mad executioner and so on,

and I think many films have come on since

that have used that as a kind of a blueprint for horror.