The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ was a 1974 horror blockbuster that defined slasher tropes for decades… but thanks to shady business deals and alleged mob connections, its creators and stars saw almost none of the profits. This week Chris and Lizzie dive into the harrowing backstory of Tobe Hooper’s breakout film. Find out how many real bones were used on set, why the cast and crew had to run to the windows to vomit, and how one of the OG final girls went through a very real hell in Texas. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Winterbauer?

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• 0:31Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:16Lizzie Bassett?

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• 1:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to another episode of What Went Wrong, your favorite podcast full stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it's nearly impossible to make them, let alone a good one, let alone one that you should definitely put on while you're eating dinner. As always, I am Chris Winterbauer, joined by Lizzie Bassett. Lizzie, what do you have for us to feast on today?

• 2:19Lizzie Bassett?

  We have the OG, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is the 52nd anniversary, this year is, of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A highly celebrated anniversary year, obviously, so we had to cover it.

• 2:33Chris Winterbauer?

  It's also the 52nd anniversary of Carry the Book, so we are doing 52s this year, I suppose.

• 2:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Exactly. No, but listen, it is spooky season, so we thought we would give you a spooky classic. And honestly, Chris, this is also a What Went Wrong classic. We're going back to our roots here on this one, and boy, are they stinky. So before we get into the movie about chainsaws that somehow only had one chainsaw, tell me, what was your experience with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre before today? And what was it like re-watching it?

• 3:04Chris Winterbauer?

  I actually saw the, I think it's 2003 remake with Jessica Biel, before I saw the original.

• 3:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, that makes sense.

• 3:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Because we were like 14, you know, at the time. And I remember when I watched the remake, I just assumed, oh, the original must be simply another Friday the 13th, you know, sort of thing. And then I remember when I watched the original, I was struck by, well, the brutality and the kind of economy of storytelling, the lack of adherence to slasher tropes that would be formed after this movie, I guess, in my opinion.

• 3:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, in many ways because of this movie.

• 3:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, kind of the just grotesque beauty of the movie. So this is a movie I admire a lot more than I enjoy watching. I find it actually very hard to watch, and I think that's a credit to everybody involved. But I also think it has some of the most gorgeous cinematography, some of the most interestingly lyrical moments unexpectedly, a real sort of grindhouse adherence to realism in a weird way that makes it almost feel like the Terrence Malick Chainsaw Massacre in moments. And so it's weird. It's like an arthouse film dressed up like a grindhouse film in a weird way. It's also an interesting movie within horror in terms of sort of ableism and the presentation

• 4:26Chris Winterbauer?

  of individuals with either disabilities, or birth defects, or deformities, or however, you know, it would be described, or learning disability on screen. And I think it's a little more complicated than other horror films that use, and movies just in general, use any form of somebody like deviation from the norm as a visual shorthand for bad. You know, we've talked about Disney movies and, you know, characters are given very exaggerated features that are supposed to imply some sort of sinister motive. But I think this movie is like a little more complicated on that front. I think Leatherface is actually a really kind of interesting character with the way that he's portrayed.

• 5:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Can I just say, Leatherface has the best costume for the day every time.

• 5:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 5:06Lizzie Bassett?

  I love his different, I love when he gets the wig and the like, full-blown, whatever happened to Baby Jane mask.

• 5:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, yeah. Gunnar Hansen, I believe. Actually, I know that, you know, we can get into it. We've evolved maybe beyond some of this type of portrayal of, you know, individuals with mental handicaps. But I actually think for the time, they're trying to interestingly give some, if not humanity, but character to this character. It doesn't feel just like a mindless slasher, right? One of my favorite moments is when Leatherface starts panicking because he's killed a couple of these, like, why do these kids keep coming into my slaughterhouse, right? It's kind of like, it would be disturbing from his perspective, they just keep wandering in and he just has to keep killing them.

• 5:47Lizzie Bassett?

  And then he shows off his little nubbins that look like what veneers look like before they put the caps on you.

• 5:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, yes. His eyes are kind of haunted, but then they do do the teeth. Anywho, and then the Franklin Hardisty Paul Partain's character who's in a wheelchair in the film. My point is, it's an interesting movie that defies, I think, a lot of the conventions that would follow. On the one hand, it sets a template, a faceless masked hulking killer who's seemingly driven just by bloodlust, you know, crazy hick cannibals, you can think of like The Hills Have Eyes or whatever.

• 6:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, also the final girl, big time.

• 6:19Chris Winterbauer?

  The final girl, big time. But then there are some ways in which it's, again, it defies all of the later conventions and it doesn't fall into certain tropes. And her escape is ultimately, you know, kind of just happensstance at the end. There's no big battle or big fight, and I love the chainsaw dance that concludes the film.

• 6:35Lizzie Bassett?

  The chainsaw dance is incredible.

• 6:36Chris Winterbauer?

  And it looks beautiful, and it has, again, some of the best, I mean, the dolly shot under the swing toward the house following.

• 6:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Pam.

• 6:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Terry McMenon is beautiful, so.

• 6:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, we'll talk about that.

• 6:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Again, it's not a movie I like watching because it's just so hard to watch, so gruesome, but it's a movie I'm very impressed by.

• 6:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm with you. I had seen like pieces of this. I don't think I'd ever seen the entire thing when I was, you know, probably a teenager, probably somebody like put it on in the background of a Halloween party or something to try and be scary. And my impression of it always was that it's just gross, you know, that I don't really want to watch that. It's just gross and it's, you know, it's not even going to be scary, it's just going to be like torture porn. And I will say, I do think that this movie does chainsaw dance along the edge of torture porn. So I don't necessarily love that element of it, especially as we get into the story today and you learn how it was actually made. It gets a little harder to watch. But all that being said, I think my biggest thing with this movie is I don't find it particularly scary, which is fine.

• 7:36Lizzie Bassett?

  The only part of the movie that I actually do think is genuinely scary is the very beginning, when they pick up the hitchhiker and he's in the van. I think Edwin Neal, who plays the hitchhiker, I believe, Nubbins is his God-given name, he is wonderful. And the thing about that part of the movie that I love is that it feels genuinely uncertain about what's going to happen. That uncertainty is gone the second that they start entering Leatherface's house and you just know that he's just going to be hacking them up for the rest of the movie. So the middle part of this movie is a little tedious for me. However, when they get to the dinner scene and the rest of the family is revealed, I think this movie is kind of awesome. It is gross, it's weird, as we're going to learn, there's a lot of things about the

• 8:21Lizzie Bassett?

  production that are not great, though not uncommon, as we've learned on this show for very small-budget independent films. But it is just so gonzo and bizarre and weird, and I actually think all of the performances are really good. You keep pointing out the cinematography. That's Daniel Pearl. This was his first feature film ever. And Chris, do you know like what he's probably most famous for DPing since this? It's not a movie.

• 8:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay, tell me.

• 8:52Lizzie Bassett?

  He went on to become like one of the most prolific music video DPs of all time. These are just a couple of the music videos that he was the cinematographer on. The Rain, Supa Dupa Fly, Missy Elliott, yes, that's the trash bag one. I Would Do Anything For Love But I Won't Do That, of course, directed by Michael Bay. November Rain. November Rain. Every Breath You Take, Dancing With Myself, Billie Jean, an absolutely enormous amount of Mariah Carey and Shania Twain, and also Bye Bye Bye. So when I saw that, I was like, oh, yeah, this movie looks fucking awesome. The shots in this are incredible, the editing, I think, is amazing. There's a lot of edits, there's a lot of quick cuts, it works really, really well.

• 9:36Lizzie Bassett?

  So all to say, I'm with you. I appreciate this movie very much, so much more than I thought I was going to. I enjoyed, I would say, the bookends of it, not so much the middle part. But yeah, this movie is incredible. So let's saw into it, shall we?

• 9:51Chris Winterbauer?

  Chainsaw Sound Effect.

• 9:55Lizzie Bassett?

  All right. Our main sources for today are The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the film that terrified a rattled nation by Joseph Lanza, Chainsaw Confidential by Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen, and an excellent Texas Monthly piece called They Came, They Sawed by John Bloom. So here are the details as always. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is directed by Toby Hooper. It is written by Kim Henkel and Toby Hooper. It was released in October of 1974. It stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Seidau, Gunnar Hansen, Terry McMenon, William Vail, Alan Danziger, John Dugan, and of course, opening narration by John Larriquette. The IMDb logline is, "Five friends head out to rural Texas to visit the grave of a grandfather.

• 10:38Lizzie Bassett?

  On the way, they stumble across what appears to be a deserted house, only to discover something sinister within, something armed with a chainsaw."

• 10:46Lizzie Bassett?

  That's a pretty good IMDB logline.

• 10:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 10:49Lizzie Bassett?

  I like that they spice it up at the end there. Okay, so let's start with a director who we have talked about on the podcast before, and that is Toby Hooper. He was born in Austin, Texas, in 1943. And if you ask him, Chris, that birth started in a movie theater, because Hooper claims his mother went into labor in the cinema, which is probably true, considering his parents were hotel managers and the hotel that they worked at was surrounded by movie theaters. So at just three years old, he grabbed his dad's Bell and Howell 8mm camera and started filming. He said they were little stories. Here's my cousin and her boyfriend. She's tied on the railroad track. Here comes the tricycle train with a beer can smokestack. That's direct from Hooper. Now, a couple of other Toby Hooper childhood experiences that are important today. One, at some point, the family doctor, Chris, made a house call to the Hooper house.

• 11:34Lizzie Bassett?

  And for some reason, this man thought that it would be fun to tell little Toby Hooper about a Halloween mask that he himself had made as a medical student from a cadaver in the morgue.

• 11:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Cool.

• 11:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, great. And then there was the time that his aunt called and decided it would also be fun to tell little Toby Hooper all about Ed Gein. Chris, what do you know about Ed Gein?

• 11:56Chris Winterbauer?

  Just a friendly Midwest guy who liked to kill people and turn them into friendly household objects.

• 12:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, chairs, lampshades.

• 12:06Chris Winterbauer?

  Chairs, lampshades.

• 12:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Nipple belts.

• 12:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Also, the inspiration for Psycho, the Robert Bloch book, and then eventually the movie.

• 12:14Lizzie Bassett?

  Silence of the Lambs.

• 12:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, and then Silence of the Lambs. Also, and I do think it's very, this movie, it's striking. I know it's 14 years after Psycho, but still, it feels like the distance between Earth and the moon in terms of what's being shown on screen.

• 12:27Lizzie Bassett?

  Big time.

• 12:27Chris Winterbauer?

  So it is very interesting. The delta between this and Psycho is greater than Psycho and anything else in the history of film.

• 12:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I think that's fair. All right, now, these adults just went on about their days, but obviously, these stories were traumatizing for a child, and they haunted Toby Hooper for a long time. Now, he went to college at UT Austin, that college is going to come up quite a bit today, and studied in the then-brand-new Department of Radio, Television, and Film, which apparently, at the time, had zero equipment and only two film students. But Hooper met the general manager of a public TV station while he was there, Robert Schenkin. And Hooper would visit him three, maybe four, times a week, and Schenkin eventually allowed him to borrow the station's camera. And he liked him so much that he started giving him gigs, shooting some footage for the channel. I don't think Hooper actually graduated from UT Austin. I believe he left after about two years.

• 13:16Lizzie Bassett?

  But he did start working right away as a documentary cameraman and also teaching film at a college level. Now, I can't confirm that he was a teacher at UT Austin, but we think he probably was, because on August 1, 1966, he was on the UT Austin campus. He walked out of a building, only to be suddenly shoved back inside by Austin Police Officer Billy Speed. Do you know about this?

• 13:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Is this the shooting that was happening?

• 13:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yep. Speed told Hooper to stay put, and then Billy Speed walked out, and he was instantly shot dead. This is because, on August 1, 1966, former Marine Charles Whitman opened fire from the University of Texas clock tower in Austin. He killed 14 people, wounded many more. It was one of the deadliest shootings in US history at the time, and I believe still. Hooper was further traumatized when his mother had to have her lung removed, and he found himself unable to shake the image of her being sawed open. However, his passion for filmmaking never waned, and he was constantly looking to get as much experience as possible, though he wasn't always great with words. At one point, he went to a Nixon rally to capture some footage of the president, and he immediately told the Secret Service, "I'm here to shoot the president,"

• 14:26Lizzie Bassett?

  at which point he was tackled to the ground. But by the late 60s, all of this hustling, plus his longtime mentorship under Robert Schenkin, had paid off, and it led to his first real directing job, The Song Is Love, a documentary about folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary that aired on PBS in 1971. Right around the same time, a businessman friend of Hooper's named David Ford helped raise $40,000 to fund Hooper's first film, Eggshells. This movie, very avant-garde. I believe he was actually filming a real, sort of, communal living space just outside of Austin. The idea was to kind of show, according to Hooper, the end of the Vietnam War with the troops coming home, but tell it through the eyes of a commune. It's all handheld cameras. He used real people, as we said.

• 15:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Much of the script was almost completely improvised. Now, one of the people in the film was Kim Henkel. He had also helped Hooper write it a little bit. Henkel was a screenwriter and director himself. He's not credited on that movie, but he did help him. We believe that they met at UT Austin. Had a hard time confirming this, but they did both definitely attend. So Eggshells is the first time they worked together, and it made essentially $0, but it did make a name for Toby Hooper in Austin's very small, but engaged and close-knit film community. Henkel said, quote, "After that, Toby and I became casual friends. He wanted me to develop a script with him." So they started working on the idea of a modern Hansel and Gretel. They said, "We had no budget, no cast, and the last picture had not been successful. What do you do?

• 15:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Horror films is about it." And Hooper figured the same. He thought back to when he had seen Night of the Living Dead, and he told Texas Monthly in 2004, quote, "They were lined up to see it, and I thought, this is it. This is the way to get attention 2,000 miles from LA and get noticed. If I could only raise the money." They also needed an idea, Chris, and this came before the money. In December of 1972, right before Christmas time, the bells were jingling, and it all crystallized in Toby Hooper's jingle bell brain. He was shopping in the hardware department of Montgomery Ward, which was a huge department store chain at the time. So naturally, right before the holidays, it was pretty slam-packed. And it turns out Toby Hooper, pretty claustrophobic. So that started to kick in, and he desperately wanted to get out of there.

• 16:40Lizzie Bassett?

  That's when he looked over and saw the racks of chainsaws and thought, quote, "If I start the saw, those people would just part. They would get out of my way." Fortunately, he got out of Montgomery Ward without hacking through crowds of Christmas shoppers. And here's what happened next, according to Hooper, quote, "I went home, sat down, all the channels just tuned in. The zeitgeist blew through, and the whole damn story came to me in what seemed like about 30 seconds. The hitchhiker, the older brother in the gas station, the girl escaping twice, the dinner sequence, people out in the country, out of gas." So he teams up with Henkel. They start developing the screenplay. They're obviously working with the original Hansel and Gretel idea, quote, "Only instead of being lured to a gingerbread cottage with gumdrops, it was a little more sinister." I would say so, yeah.

• 17:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I mean, they're eating adults, at least, in this one.

• 17:30Lizzie Bassett?

  Young adults, but yeah, that's true.

• 17:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 17:32Lizzie Bassett?

  Young, not consenting adults.

• 17:34Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 17:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Not consenting to be eaten. So they figured, what's the best version of a witch who cooks and eats children? How about a real-life cannibal and serial killer who eats adults? A plus. And this, of course, led them back to which Ryan Murphy victim that we have already mentioned today.

• 17:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Ed Gein.

• 17:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Ed Gein, yes. Handyman, and all-around weird dude who lived in Plainfield, Wisconsin. As we said, nobody suspected him at all, but much to their surprise, they caught him in 1957. He had an absolute house of horrors. And I do think, like, this movie is pulling so heavily from the descriptions of what they found in Ed Gein's house, with the way that, you know, there's all the bones everywhere, the way they're using bones as light fixtures and everything. That's unfortunately all stuff that really, really was in his house. He did make skin suits, à la Buffalo Bill. He mostly robbed graves, but he did murder two live women, at least.

• 18:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Oof.

• 18:29Lizzie Bassett?

  In addition to Gein, Henkel looked into Elmer Wayne Henley. He said, quote, "He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man. I saw some news reports where Elmer Wayne was identifying bodies and their locations. He was this skinny, little, old 17-year-old, and he kind of puffed out his chest and said, 'I did these crimes, and I'm going to stand up and take it like a man.' That struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters." I think that's what you're picking up on in terms of there being a little bit more nuance to the characters. To me, it's like this family has rules. You know what I mean?

• 19:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, it just feels like it's somewhat thought through, as opposed to simply, you know, either some sort of automaton, you know what I mean, that is an embodiment of evil in some way. There are interesting class issues at play. I feel like there's also an interesting dynamic in which Franklin is viewed by his sister's friends as a burden, and, you know, they don't want him around in certain ways. And then, you know, Franklin is paralleled through the family in some way, which is a group of, you could say, just kind of twisted, but maybe they've, you know, taken power into their own hands after being shunned by society, and, you know, and now we're going to eat the rich, quote, you know what I mean, of these young people who are able-bodied and attractive and have very perky nipples.

• 19:50Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, you noticed?

• 19:51Chris Winterbauer?

  No, no, I didn't notice anything. I was like, is that a reference to the nipple belt? But.

• 19:56Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 19:57Chris Winterbauer?

  But anyway, my point is just, it's interesting. And it doesn't feel like it's pedantic in some way. It just feels like it's, they thought it through. They're like, what would this subculture be like in this house?

• 20:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Chris Winterbauer?

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• 21:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Today's episode is sponsored by Mars. You might not realize it, but Mars is behind so many of your favorite Halloween treats. And I'm not just talking about your candy bowl. Yes, Mars makes iconic candies like M&Ms, Snickers, Starburst, my personal favorite, and Skittles. But they also have salty snacks, easy to make meal options, and even treats for your pets. There's something for everyone to enjoy this spooky season. David and I are too old to trick or treat, so we've been getting creative with our Halloween movie night spreads for our friends. I put together a char bootery board with some classic sweets like Rice Krispie Treats and Peanut Butter M&Ms. And because I'm a salty girl, I added some Pringles and my all time favorite snack, Cheese It Crackers. Scary delicious. For Halloween night, I'm making a spooky seven-layer dip using Ben's Original Ready Rice because there is nothing that my kid loves more than a rice and bean dip. And don't think I forgot about our dog Q.

• 21:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Mars knows he needs a celebration too, so I put together a special Halloween treat jar packed with Greenie's Original Pumpkin Spice Dental Chews and Pedigree Tasty Biscuits. He's agreed to share with the neighbors because he's a very good boy. Find Mars products in a retailer near you or on Instagram at @marsglobal, M-A-R-S-G-L-O-B-A-L, where you can shop everyday favorites and limited time Halloween offerings.

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• 23:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, the inspiration for Leatherface himself, of course, came from Toby Hooper's family doctor, who maybe should not be practicing medicine.

• 23:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Dr. Leather.

• 23:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Dr. Leatherface.

• 23:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Dr. Leatherface. But spelled like-

• 23:34Lizzie Bassett?

  That's a great, like, 30 Rock skit.

• 23:36Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, like, L-E-I-

• 23:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Leo Spachaman.

• 23:40Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Lizzie Bassett?

  Dr. Leatherface, great. So they did decide that, quote, "Leatherface would have different human skin masks to fit each of his moods." I love that. What a nice touch. The way they worked is that Henkel would write and then Hooper would refine. They were a very good team, and within six weeks, they had a draft. And Chris, do you know what the original title was? It is appalling. And actually, they say this in the movie.

• 24:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, uh, I bet you I do know what it is.

• 24:05Lizzie Bassett?

  I bet you do, too.

• 24:06Chris Winterbauer?

  I bet it was Saturn in retrograde.

• 24:08Lizzie Bassett?

  I wish. It was Head Cheese.

• 24:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Head Cheese. Oh, I thought they were gonna do the-

• 24:13Lizzie Bassett?

  No.

• 24:14Chris Winterbauer?

  They do the astrological sign stuff at the beginning, right?

• 24:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 24:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Head Cheese.

• 24:18Lizzie Bassett?

  Head Cheese.

• 24:18Chris Winterbauer?

  That's a good band name. Is there a band called Head Cheese?

• 24:21Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm sure there's a band called Head Cheese. There's no way there's not a band called Head Cheese. And they were probably at the Battle of the Bands with you in Seattle.

• 24:29Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm surprised they didn't call it Leatherface.

• 24:30Lizzie Bassett?

  That was another title that I believe was bandied about at some point, but the OG working title, Head Cheese. So Hooper and Henkel set up a production company called Vortex. And Chris, they've got a script, they've got a vision, they've got a production company. What's missing from this picture?

• 24:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Money.

• 24:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Money. They have $0. And this is where a man named Bill Parsley comes in. Great name. Now, he was the VP of Financial Affairs for Texas Tech University, as well as a former legislator, but most importantly, he loved movies, and he really, really wanted to be a movie producer.

• 25:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Dentist money. This is the way to do it. This is the way they did it.

• 25:07Lizzie Bassett?

  This is actually all money.

• 25:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 25:09Lizzie Bassett?

  So thanks to a cash injection from his friend, oil man, R.B. McGowan, he'd already produced a couple of films. They had all done really badly, but he was very excited to give it another shot. So when Warren Skerrin, who was at this point the first head of the Texas Film Commission, he would go on to be a very prolific, I believe, script doctor and script writer, he called up Parsley and said, "Hey, there's a new horror movie in the works called Head Cheese." And Bill said, "Let's add some parsley to that cheese." He met with Henkel and Hooper and agreed to raise $60,000 in exchange for 50% ownership of the project. A few other people also chipped in, which further split up the stake. So this meant that Vortex, Hooper and Henkel's production company, already only owned about 50% of the film. Keep that in mind.

• 25:52Lizzie Bassett?

  So they start casting right away, and they knew they wanted unknowns to give the movie a more documentary feel, and also because they had no money. Most of the production crew was also brand new and figuring out their roles as they went along. Marilyn Burns was a drama student at where else but UT Austin. She was also extremely determined. John Bloom wrote for Texas Monthly, quote, "When Robert Altman filmed Brewster McLeod in Houston, she scored a bit part as the Astrodome tour guide. When the great Waldo Pepper reached Texas, she signed up as an extra, and in the big scene in which a plane is mobbed, outran every other extra so her face would be seen on camera." She was also conveniently the only actress on the Texas Film Commission board, which is the exact network that Hooper tapped into when looking for his cast.

• 26:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Gunner Hansen wrote in Chainsaw Confidential, quote, "She wasn't concerned by the subject matter or that it was a horror film. In fact, she liked horror and was grateful for the chance. I wanted it to be good," she says. "I believed in this movie from the beginning. I always thought it would work. I knew it was going to go in the theaters because I was starring in it, and I wanted to star in a movie. Good for you, Marilyn." She was also particularly motivated to make this work because she had come so close to a speaking role, Chris, in Sidney Lumet's Love and Molly. Never heard of it? Most people haven't, but-

• 27:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, yeah. No, no, no, I just remember that was kind of his one misfire in the 70s. I mean, kind of one of the few of his career.

• 27:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. It did not do well critically or commercially, but at the time, it would have been a pretty big break, seemingly, to have a speaking part in a Sidney Lumet movie. And she was cast. She got one. But evidently, Blythe Danner's agent put in a last-minute request that Lumet was required to also cast another actress as part of the deal. And that actress was Susan Sarandon.

• 27:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, interesting.

• 27:33Lizzie Bassett?

  And as a consolation prize, they gave Marilyn Burns the role of the stand-in for Blythe Danner and Susan Sarandon. And she said, quote, "I wasn't the right height or body type for either of them, so everyone hated me." She was five inches shorter than both Danner and Sarandon. It did not go well.

• 27:49Chris Winterbauer?

  I didn't know Danner was tall.

• 27:50Lizzie Bassett?

  She's tall.

• 27:50Chris Winterbauer?

  I knew Sarandon was taller. That's extremely common, especially for smaller roles, where you only show up in a scene, maybe, or even if you have a bigger role.

• 27:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Right, people want a package deal.

• 27:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yes, the agencies will try to package things. I thought you were gonna say they make it to the edit and her character is simply excised, and that happens-

• 28:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no. I mean, that happens all the time.

• 28:07Chris Winterbauer?

  All the time. I mean, I've had to do it myself.

• 28:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 28:09Chris Winterbauer?

  You feel terrible when somebody gives a good performance and it has nothing to do with their performance, it's just the scene no longer fits in the movie.

• 28:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Chris Winterbauer?

  That's why my recommendation to actor friends, or actors out there listening, don't tell anybody until you see the movie yourself.

• 28:23Lizzie Bassett?

  That's true. That's true.

• 28:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, so that didn't go well, but neither does this. And by the way, she wasn't the only one on the set of Love and Molly. Toby Hooper was also lurking around because he was trying to make contacts anywhere he could, i.e. crew, actors, anything. And there is a very funny story about how he was literally stealing chicken wings from the crew's lunch, and one of the producers of Love and Molly was like, "Do you work on this film?" And he was like, "No." And the guy was like, "Then put the chicken wings back." And he did.

• 28:57Chris Winterbauer?

  I love how you just, like, walk onto films that, like, Steven Spielberg's just walking onto the universe a lot.

• 29:02Lizzie Bassett?

  In Texas in the 70s? Yes.

• 29:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 29:04Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe still could. I don't know. Now, another actor from Love and Molly also appears in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and that is Paul Partain, who plays Franklin. He had a very small speaking role in that film, and when he auditioned for Hooper and Henkel, they figured if he's good enough for Lumet, he's good enough for us. He had been performing at a dinner theater run by the drama teacher at a local junior high school where Kim Henkel's wife happened to work, so that is how small-town this production was. And just a little bit about Paul, because we're not gonna get to talk about him much more throughout this, but he took this role very, very seriously. He declared himself a method actor and refused to get out of his role or the wheelchair for the entire shoot. Now, this would theoretically be fine, except that he required all of his castmates to

• 29:46Lizzie Bassett?

  wait on him by grabbing him drinks or snacks that he obviously could have just gotten up and gotten for himself. So he really pissed everybody off, and they super didn't like him, which I think you do see that dynamic quite a bit on screen of everybody seeming to think that Franklin is just incredibly annoying, to the point that Gunner Hansen, who we will talk about momentarily, didn't even realize that he hadn't met the real Paul until many years later. He said, quote, "I never realized it was an act. When I met up with Paul at a little cafe in Austin for a cup of coffee, I had not seen him since I had killed him on set. He turned out to not be Franklin at all. For many years after that, whenever I was in town, we would get dinner. He confessed to me that he'd been scared of losing Franklin during the filming and not being able to go into character when Toby called action."

• 30:28Chris Winterbauer?

  I love the idea of Gunner showing up going, "You can walk! It's a miracle!"

• 30:34Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes, perfect.

• 30:36Chris Winterbauer?

  We don't need to get into it. Method acting as a method right now, but does seem like it translated well on screen.

• 30:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, boy, did it work, because they seemed like they did not care for him.

• 30:46Chris Winterbauer?

  And it adds an interesting, I think, realistic valence to the film. I mean, he's like the tag along brother, you know? Yeah, again, it's interesting.

• 30:53Lizzie Bassett?

  It is interesting. I agree that I think it works, but I'm sure it wasn't particularly fun on set.

• 30:58Chris Winterbauer?

  I would imagine not a lot of this was very fun.

• 31:01Lizzie Bassett?

  We're gonna go with none of it was. So Edwin Neal, another UT Austin graduate, was cast as Nubbins, the hitchhiker. And according to Neal himself, he hyped himself up for the audition, which he showed up to blazing drunk by channeling his, and this is a direct quote, I'm just gonna read it, "brain damaged paranoid schizophrenic nephew."

• 31:19Chris Winterbauer?

  All right.

• 31:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Okay, whatever. Also, one thing that I wasn't expecting, I don't know why I wasn't, but is how much this movie borrows from and builds off of Deliverance. I mean, there is an enormous amount.

• 31:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Was Deliverance before this?

• 31:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Two years before this. It's 72.

• 31:35Chris Winterbauer?

  Got it. Yeah, definitely. Certainly the, sort of, the wrong word, exploitation vibe to, I think The Hills of Eyes will be after this and we'll build on this for sure.

• 31:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes.

• 31:45Chris Winterbauer?

  When you mentioned Hooper being a hands-off director, I saw this clip of Tracy Letts on, I think, the Big Picture Podcast. And he was saying how, you know, it was Duval and Tommy Lee Jones didn't get along well with certain directors in the 70s. And Letts was making the point that at this point in time, there was a pretty big gap between, you know, theatre and film. And a lot of the film actors, he was saying, view directors as kind of technicians. Their job was to set up the shot, their job was to get everything in place, focus on the story continuity, and then the actor would come in and give you the best thing they've come up with on the first take. And unless there's a problem with it, we're not workshopping it. That's not why we're here. And that was kind of, he was saying, Duval and Tommy Lee Jones's approach,

• 32:27Chris Winterbauer?

  whereas he came Letts from the theatre, where the director's job was to guide you emotionally through what you were going to do. And I do think that's, there's an interesting difference. You know, the Eastwoods of the world, where it's, "I'm here to get the camera in the right spot and make sure this is gonna cut together in post and blah, blah, blah, and oversee everything. And your job is to do your performance to the best of your abilities." As opposed to the more Svengali, you know, approach of we're gonna drill down on this together, you know?

• 32:53Lizzie Bassett?

  And also, everybody on this movie is brand new. This is almost everyone's first feature, and most of them come from regional theatre, if that. So I think that's a really good point to make about how this would be very disorienting to show up and just feel like you have no guidance. And also, there's a six foot four Icelandic man with a chainsaw running after you. By the way, Tracy Letts, also amazing playwright, as well as great actor.

• 33:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 33:18Lizzie Bassett?

  And I hope, great husband, because I love Carey Kuhn.

• 33:20Chris Winterbauer?

  She's great.

• 33:20Lizzie Bassett?

  So Jim Seidow was hired to play the cook. And this was actually because he had a SAG card. They don't even remember why this was the case, but reportedly, they just needed to pay union scale to one SAG actor on the movie. And so basically, Hooper just got ahold of him and was like, "Bah, do you just, do you wanna do this, you know? Like, do you care?" And the guy was like, "Sure." They did actually offer him shares or points of the movie, and he said, "No, thank you. I'll take the cash," which, as we will learn, was probably smart. John Dugan, aka Grandpa, was actually Kim Henkel's 19-year-old brother-in-law. He sat in makeup for hours every single time that they would shoot. He'd been working in children's theatre in Chicago prior to this.

• 34:03Lizzie Bassett?

  And it was his idea to make the grandfather's, like, hand movements and everything be sort of like a suckling newborn baby.

• 34:09Chris Winterbauer?

  The baby.

• 34:10Lizzie Bassett?

  Disgusting.

• 34:11Chris Winterbauer?

  He looks so dead, it is jarring when he starts moving.

• 34:14Lizzie Bassett?

  I know.

• 34:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Until that point, at least I always just said, "Oh, he's dead. They're just kind of like acting like he's alive." And then when he gets that tasty finkie blood in his mouth.

• 34:22Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, God. It's so gross.

• 34:25Chris Winterbauer?

  It's really gross.

• 34:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Terry McMinn was cast as Pam after Hooper and Henkel saw a local newspaper article about her as an up-and-coming actress. She was working as a waitress, landing parts in regional theatre. She was hesitant to take this on. It was non-union, as we said, which at the time was not viewed very favourably. She actually said that they didn't even call indie films indie, they called them scab films, that that was kind of the vibe at that point. But she did it. William Vale, who played Kirk, and Alan Danziger, who I believe is Jerry, were both additional UT Austin grads recruited for the film. Toby Hooper basically just cast everyone at UT Austin in this movie. Well, except for John Larriquette as the narrator. Now, he is easily the most successful out of the entire cast.

• 35:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, he's probably most famous for Night Court, but he's been in everything.

• 35:12Chris Winterbauer?

  I love John Larriquette.

• 35:14Lizzie Bassett?

  He's the best.

• 35:15Chris Winterbauer?

  He plays like such a despicable character in a guest episode of House. That's so funny. Where he's like woken up for a coma that he's been in for 20 years, and he doesn't remember anything in between, and his like son needs a kidney, but he doesn't wanna give it to him. I don't know, he's very funny. He's a really funny actor.

• 35:29Lizzie Bassett?

  He's great. He's had an incredible career, but this, I think, is his first credit.

• 35:33Chris Winterbauer?

  That's crazy. And his voice already sounds 60 years old in the meaning of this movie.

• 35:39Lizzie Bassett?

  Well, yeah, and back in the early 70s, at this point, he was an out-of-work actor who was trying to make it in LA, where he had moved. He had zero film credits. He heard about the film, either he got in touch with Toby Hooper or Hooper got in touch with him. They'd become friends years earlier when Larriquette was still living in Texas. But when Hooper learned that Larriquette was gonna be in town, he grabbed him for an hour in a recording booth, and that was it. And apparently, Hooper's only question about Larriquette was, "Can he do an imitation of Orson Welles?" And the answer is, "Kind of."

• 36:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Ah, the French.

• 36:09Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, Paul Merson.

• 36:11Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, I have to say, watching it now, like, I think Marilyn Burns is very good, especially in the back half. They do almost hide the ball on her being a final girl. I feel like they do a nice job of making you think, is Franklin gonna survive?

• 36:24Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 36:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, they give Franklin a lot of attention, and then he just gets off in a pretty nasty way. I find Terry McMinn very good as Pam.

• 36:32Lizzie Bassett?

  You know, I think Terry McMinn, and then Jerry, and Pam's boyfriend, whose name is escaping me right now, are some of the best in this movie, along with Edwin Neal.

• 36:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Lizzie Bassett?

  They're really good. They're very understated.

• 36:44Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Lizzie Bassett?

  Marilyn Burns, I honestly don't think that I can even speak to her as an actor, because I don't know how much of it was acting. And that's not to put shade on her, we're gonna get into this more. I think what she puts on screen is remarkable in terms of like how much she went through for this. But my point is just, she went through absolute hell on this. So it's hard to kind of be like, "Oh, yeah, she, you know, what good acting she did." Because I'm like, I don't know if she was acting for a lot of this. I think she was miserable.

• 37:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. Did Terry McMinn do anything after this?

• 37:17Lizzie Bassett?

  I think she had a few small parts and some other stuff, but yeah, she's great.

• 37:20Chris Winterbauer?

  I was just surprised, because I thought she was really good.

• 37:22Lizzie Bassett?

  She is. And by the way, you may have heard a rumor at some point that John Larriquette was paid in marijuana, and according to Larriquette himself, this was, quote, "Totally true." "He," meaning Toby Hooper, "gave me some marijuana, or a matchbox, or whatever you call it in those days. I walked out of the recording studio and patted him on the backside and said, 'Good luck to you.'"

• 37:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Godspeed.

• 37:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, we believe it was actual money for the future installments of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I can't confirm. Now, obviously, there is a character I haven't mentioned yet. Who are we missing, Chris? The one, the only.

• 37:52Chris Winterbauer?

  Leatherface? Gunner Hansen?

• 37:54Lizzie Bassett?

  Leatherface.

• 37:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Leatherface, yes. Now, we actually don't know who the original actor cast as Leatherface was. It has never been revealed. But what we do know is that right before production was set to begin, he had an absolute mentee bee. He locked himself in his motel room, he got hammered drunk, refused to come out, and then quit the movie, because he felt like there was too much bad karma surrounding it. And this left Toby Hooper on the hunt for someone, anyone at this point, who could replace his villain. So he dipped his toe back into the old UT Austin pond, and he found Gunner Hansen. Hansen was a six foot four UT Austin student who had majored in Scandinavian Studies and English and who wanted to be a poet or a writer. He was born in Iceland, he moved to Maine at age five, and then eventually settled in Texas. He also wasn't really an actor.

• 38:40Lizzie Bassett?

  He had played Lenny in a UT production of Mice and Men, but he found that he really, really hated performing onstage. However, he was eating a hamburger with his co-star from that production when his friend mentioned that there was a horror movie coming through town, and Hansen would be kind of perfect for it. But it had already been cast, so he let it go. However, when word got around that the original actor had shit the bed, Hansen said, "I headed downtown immediately. Though I still dreaded performing in front of an audience, this was different. It was a movie, and if I made a mistake on camera, we would just shoot it again. Besides, I'd already killed onstage, and I knew I could do it again. And I needed a summer job."

• 39:15Chris Winterbauer?

  There we go.

• 39:15Lizzie Bassett?

  I was a camp counselor, he was Leatherface. Oh, actually, I forgot to share this at the top, so since we just talked about Leatherface, I will share this now. This is my experience with chainsaws. Very personal, Chris. And a reason that I thought this movie would be much scarier than I actually found it is that, did you ever go on like a real backwoods haunted hayride when you were a kid or a teenager?

• 39:34Chris Winterbauer?

  No, I don't think so.

• 39:35Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know if they have them out here, but they sure have them in Virginia. And there's one that takes place on Ashland Berry Farm, aka Ashland Scary Farm. And the way, the way that it worked, they literally put you in like a truck with a bunch of hay, and they start driving you out towards the woods, where they've set up this essentially like maze, like a course. And this is what I remember, I believe that this is what happened, but people literally would drop out of the trees, like, into the truck with a chainsaw and just scare the shit out of you. And I was so scared. Like, I don't know that I've ever been this scared before or since. And at a certain point in the maze, after you've been like crawling through tunnels and they're stabbing at you with knives and they're chasing you and everything, I turned a corner and I saw a man come at me with a chainsaw, just going, "Ah!"

• 40:19Lizzie Bassett?

  And obviously, you're supposed to run. And I just stopped. I just froze, and I couldn't move. And this poor, like, probably regional theatre actor had to stand there with a chainsaw going, "Ah!" Like, trying to get me to run, and it didn't work, and I had to be physically removed from the maze. So there you go.

• 40:36Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a good day when you learn that you have neither fight nor flight as an instinct.

• 40:41Lizzie Bassett?

  I have nothing, nothing.

• 40:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Lizzie has that third response. Just give up.

• 40:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Just stop.

• 40:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Surrender.

• 40:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, so anyway, just me and Leatherface. All right. Toby Hooper essentially cast him on site. Hansen was, as we've said, a huge guy and had the right build to really whip that chainsaw around. In his audition, Hooper was like, "Eh, just FYI, you're gonna have to squeal like a pig. Are you gonna be able to do that?" To which, again, I say, Deliverance much. And Hansen said, "I can learn." And he meant it, Chris. He went to a friend's house who had a pigpen, he chased them around, poking them until one finally squealed. He did try to replicate it and discovered that he could not, in fact, squeal like a piggy, but he did his best. Now, he took the role seriously. His mother actually worked at the Austin State School in the clinic there, and that school did treat some people with some developmental disabilities. He went there, he did observe the patients, and he really tried to bring

• 41:32Lizzie Bassett?

  a lot of what he saw there into the character. So to your point, he's not just lumbering around in a mask. I actually, I do think he's giving a pretty remarkable performance.

• 41:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, originally, he had full-blown gibberish lines that Hooper had sort of translated for Hansen, so he would know what he was saying, but they were like, "Bah, sorry, this doesn't work. It makes Leatherface team too smart. We're cutting all your lines." Just kind of like squeal and grunt, and so that's where they landed.

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• 42:58Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, Toby Hooper also instructed Hanson to stay away from the other actors. And he told the other actors that Hanson was just a loner who didn't want to hang out with them. Toby Hooper definitely seems to dip his toe into the manipulation pool on this movie, for sure. I'm curious from you as a director, do you feel like it's ever appropriate to adjust people's perceptions of their coworkers essentially like this? Like, I understand why you want to do it. Anyway, I know how I feel. What do you think?

• 43:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I mean, I've never been involved in anything that would require that, personally.

• 43:30Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't know what does require it.

• 43:32Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, I'm more of the opinion that if they're having trouble in the scene, my job is to help them within the scene. I'm not a big believer in assigning stuff beyond what's required in the moment. You know what I'm saying? Like, requiring them during breaks to continue to go and act as this character. You know what I'm saying? Like, whatever that might be. I kind of feel like you're starting to bleed between life and work there in a way that's probably not okay.

• 44:01Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't like it.

• 44:02Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 44:02Lizzie Bassett?

  That's my bottom-line take on it. I don't like it. I don't think that your job, and I'm not a director, but I don't think that your job as a director is to forcibly direct people's emotions and experiences when the cameras aren't rolling.

• 44:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, to save money, many cast and crew took deferred payment or decided to forego salaries altogether in favor of points from Vortex's portion of the film. But as we know, at this point already, Vortex only owned 50%, and these people probably didn't know that. According to McMinn, quote, "They had us sign contracts for deferred money, which translated to good luck getting anything. Toby knew that. We resented him for it."

• 44:39Chris Winterbauer?

  It's a little Eduardo Saverin dilution of Cher's social network.

• 44:43Lizzie Bassett?

  Big time.

• 44:45Chris Winterbauer?

  Without a good settlement at the end.

• 44:47Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Eduardo Saverin was fine. Now, only one week before production began, it was Warren Scarron, the head of Texas Film Commission, who told Hooper and Henkel to toss out "Head Cheese" and all the other titles you've been bandying about and simply call it "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre." So, production of the newly titled "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" kicked off in July of 1973 with Daniel Pearl serving as a cinematographer. As we said, he'd never shot a feature film before. It is, I think, remarkable that this is his feature film debut. This movie is shot so well, as we said. Go back. Just go back and watch and appreciate the music videos that he's shot, because, good lord, this man is talented. So, let's talk a little bit now about the house. The house in the movie was southwest of Round Rock, Texas, on Quick Hill Road.

• 45:32Lizzie Bassett?

  It was originally the home of the Quick family, who owned pharmacies in Round Rock and other central Texas towns. But by this point, they didn't live there anymore, and it had been rented out to a man named Smokey, who was happy to accommodate the cast and crew while he was living there. They actually had to just ask him to leave or move around, shuttle to different places while they're filming different sequences. And in case you can't tell by his name, yes, there was a large plot of marijuana on site that the filmmakers discovered when they arrived and were not that thrilled about, because they obviously can't show that on camera. And Bill Parsley was like, "I work for Texas Tech. I can't be near this." But it didn't matter. The house is now a restaurant called Hooper's. It has actually been moved to another part of Texas. Yes, it is named for Toby Hooper, and yes, they do lean into the theme.

• 46:17Chris Winterbauer?

  It'd be funny if it was just named for some other Hooper.

• 46:19Lizzie Bassett?

  No. But, Chris, already, things were off to a pretty bad start, because there was one bathroom for a cast and crew of over 40 people.

• 46:27Chris Winterbauer?

  This is Evil Dead all over again. Or, let me rephrase. Evil Dead was this all over again.

• 46:32Lizzie Bassett?

  It is so much worse.

• 46:34Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 46:35Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, poor art director Bob Burns first set off to find an actual dead dog for the opening shot of the film. That is what they originally told him to get. He and his girlfriend slash assistant, Mary Church, did find one, and the crew filmed it. But they and Hooper quickly realized that an actual dead dog was a little bit too much to kick the movie off with. So, after also considering a dead horse, they settled on the dead armadillo that you see in the movie, which, uh...

• 46:59Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 47:00Lizzie Bassett?

  Fun fact...

• 47:00Chris Winterbauer?

  I think it's perfect.

• 47:01Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, Burns actually took it home and stuffed it himself using a DIY taxidermy kit. Nope. It was also July in central Texas, so it was broiling hot. The van scenes in particular were awful, because they couldn't open the windows without ruining the sound. So, Hooper, the cameraman, the sound guy, and all five actors were trapped. According to Marilyn Burns, quote, "It's 110 at least, and it feels like 190 in Texas. Your skin's hot. Your car is hot. You touch the seat, it's hot. Everything's hot. So, we're all in this van. We're sweating profusely. Can't get the sound. Can't get the camera. Actors blowing their lines. We don't know what they are yet, because they keep changing them. It was just the heat, the tension at the start of filming, and the armadillo. We were so miserable." And to make matters worse, they actually lost, or conveniently, maybe,

• 47:45Lizzie Bassett?

  lost the first few days of footage, setting everything back. According to Hanson, Hooper and DP Daniel Pearl seemed to confirm that this was due to a lens malfunction. When they got the footage back from the lab, it was unusable. Marilyn Burns has a bit of a different take. She thinks that Bill Parsley saw the footage and was like, "What is this trash that I'm paying for?" She said, quote, "And then the guys that put the money up saw footage, and they were unhappy. They came to me, and they said, 'How did you let this happen?'"

• 48:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 48:12Lizzie Bassett?

  I think both could potentially be true.

• 48:14Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 48:15Lizzie Bassett?

  But either way, the first few days of footage made Bill Parsley very worried about his investment. And from this point forward, he came to set every day.

• 48:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, I'm sorry. The first few days of footage from "Head Cheese" aren't living up to your expectations, kid, sir?

• 48:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, seriously.

• 48:31Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 48:31Lizzie Bassett?

  Did you read the script? John Bloom wrote for Texas Monthly, quote, "But most of the time, Hooper didn't make an effort to talk to him. Parsley was regarded as a member of the establishment, even if he had put $40,000 of his own money in the film. And though Henkel would normally have acted as a peacemaker between the investor and the director, he was just too busy with rewrites and other chores." End quote. Now, filming days grew longer and longer to the point where multiple cast and crew members threatened to leave. Production manager Ron Bozeman worked with Henkel to convince people to stay. By the way, Ron Bozeman would later win an Academy Award for producing what Ed Gein-inspired movie?

• 49:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Is it Silence of the Lambs?

• 49:07Lizzie Bassett?

  It's Silence of the Lambs, yes.

• 49:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 49:10Lizzie Bassett?

  A lot of the below-the-line people on this movie actually go on to have incredibly extensive and successful careers, which I think shows. Again, it does look great. The three-week shoot was extended to six weeks as everything continued to drag on. Daniel Pearl was actually the one who found another investor and pushed the budget up to $80,000. And to top it all off, the cast did not really like Toby Hooper, maybe because he wasn't particularly interested in them. Edwin Neal said of Hooper's not-very-many instructions, quote, "He was so consumed by the minutia of moving lights and camera and physical things that there wasn't a lot of discussion. In fact, pretty much the entire directorial advice boiled down into one sentence. He goes, 'Well, do some more of that Struthers Martin stuff.'" Do you remember who that is?

• 49:54Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 49:54Lizzie Bassett?

  It's the villain from Cool Hand Luke. It's the "What we have here is a failure to communicate." That guy. Which, when you watch it...

• 50:01Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 50:02Lizzie Bassett?

  He is kind of doing a Struthers Martin, especially in the dinner scene.

• 50:05Chris Winterbauer?

  That's true.

• 50:06Lizzie Bassett?

  It was not a good Struthers Martin impression. Actually, I think Edwin Neal does a better one in this movie.

• 50:11Chris Winterbauer?

  So, it was good direction, as we've learned.

• 50:13Lizzie Bassett?

  That's right. Now, in case you need even more evidence that Daniel Pearl is the absolute shit, he is the one who suggested that dolly shot of the house when Pam walks in that you mentioned, the one from underneath the swing. And he came up with it on the day. He was like, "I know how we can do this. I'm gonna lay a track under the swing, lie down on a low-platform dolly, hold the camera as low as possible, keeping the track out of the shot. Use a wide-angle lens to distort the house above Pam, or Terry." Hooper loved the idea, but Bill Parsley was like, "Absolutely fucking not. You have a shot list. We're already over budget and behind schedule on Head Cheese. You need to stick to this." Just kidding. It's still Texas Chainsaw Massacre at this point.

• 50:50Chris Winterbauer?

  And by the way, probably why he has to lie on the board and operate the camera himself as opposed to, you know, you consider putting it on a ball head or something like that, is it probably would be too tall

• 50:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Chris Winterbauer?

  if you actually mount it on a ball head, like, on top of a board, on top of the doll. You know, you probably have to just, like, he has to hold it on a sandbag, is my guess, like, down there.

• 51:08Lizzie Bassett?

  No, it literally has to be as low as possible to the ground without capturing the track in the shot.

• 51:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, it's an awesome shot. According to Hooper, quote, "They threatened to fire us if we shot. We threatened to quit if we didn't." So, they got their way. Now, fun fact, Neal, who plays, again, the hitchhiker, actually did have a pretty decent acting career post this movie. His most notable role was playing the Mercer interrogator in JFK. And according to him, Oliver Stone was so impressed by that dolly shot that he actually may have given Neal the part in JFK, hoping to get some insider information on how they did that.

• 51:41Chris Winterbauer?

  Interesting.

• 51:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, who knows? It did not help that Hooper also seemed to be really making it up as he went along, including the dialogue. I don't know if you noticed this, but the scene where Sally and Franklin are arguing over who's gonna hold the flashlight, Marilyn Burns seems genuinely pissed, and that's because she was.

• 52:00Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 52:00Lizzie Bassett?

  She thought that Paul was purposely screwing up the scene, messing up the dialogue. What she didn't realize was that Hooper and Henkel were rewriting his dialogue on the spot. He even suspects that the whole thing may have been intentional on their part. Again, as sort of another element of manipulating the actors' dynamics.

• 52:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 52:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Even more frustratingly, the batteries in the flashlight and the cameras kept going out, and they had to keep redoing it over and over and over again. And while Marilyn might have been turning on Paul, the cast was also starting to turn on Marilyn, because she spent her breaks cooling off in Bill Parsley's air-conditioned Cadillac. Everybody kind of thought, "Okay, she's getting special treatment. This sucks." But what they didn't realize is that, according to Burns, she was trying to stop him from shutting down the whole thing and taking it over himself. She was also trying to convince him not to come to set quite as much, which she evidently was able to do. And by the way, there's also a bit of a weird anecdote about when Parsley signed on to do the movie, he had to create a company for it. And the name that he chose for the company was like M A B Inc.

• 53:02Lizzie Bassett?

  And some people think that that was Marilyn A. Burns, Inc.

• 53:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Hmm.

• 53:06Lizzie Bassett?

  He may have had a little bit of an obsession. But filming wasn't just dragging on for hours on end, Chris. It was also dangerous. In the scene where Leatherface dismembers Kirk, Toby Hooper insisted on using an actual chainsaw, complete with the teeth, because he wanted the sound of a real chainsaw cutting into the table beside actor Bill Vail's head. Gunner Hansen wrote, "It was extremely dangerous. The chainsaw's bar and chain would be inches from Bill's face, and I was worried that I would hurt him or worse. I told Bill that he would be all right, that I would keep him safe. I added, though, that wood chips might hit him in the face and not to flinch if they did. Any shift could move him into the saw and likely kill him, and it would ruin the shot. He agreed to be still." It's not good.

• 53:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, so you can get that sound in post.

• 53:49Lizzie Bassett?

  I know. That's the craziest thing reading this is like, you don't need to get that sound next to the guy's head. It probably will sound better if you don't get it right there.

• 53:58Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, everything's replaced.

• 53:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, I don't know. Maybe he didn't know that. I have no idea. Maybe he wanted them to be genuinely scared. I don't know. Now, he may not have gotten hurt during this, but almost every cast member did suffer some sort of injury. Edwin Neal actually fell down on the road, and the asphalt was so hot that it burned his face. Paul Partain, he bruised his arm, also cut his arm, I believe, tumbling down the hill very early on in the shoot. William Vail, Bill Vail, he was actually hit in the face by the sledgehammer. It was a foam rubber sledgehammer, but it still hit him pretty hard, left a mark. Poor Gunner Hansen had no peripheral vision in his little Leatherface masks. And there was actually one time when he missed like a corner or missed something that he tripped on.

• 54:43Lizzie Bassett?

  He was running with the chainsaw, again, with teeth on, tripped, flew up in the air and fell on the ground. Fortunately, the chainsaw didn't cut into his body, but I mean, it absolutely could have. This is the grossest one. Makeup artist and set designer Dorothy Pearl, who goes by Dottie. One of her jobs as the set designer was that she actually had been injecting the dead animals with formaldehyde over and over again to try and keep them from decomposing. And at one point, she missed and stabbed herself in the leg with the syringe.

• 55:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Ew. Jesus.

• 55:17Lizzie Bassett?

  Terry McMinn, she had a terrible time in that scene where she runs into the house with all the chickens and feathers and everything.

• 55:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, oh, God. And resetting that would just be a nightmare.

• 55:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Totally. She had to run in that metal bucket. Her shins were super bruised up. She was gagging because there were all the feathers all over the floor. She apparently screamed so much that she had to take, quote, "soothing shots of Jack Daniels." She said, "We shot from 8:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night. All I did was run and try to get away from a 300-pound man for 10 hours. I couldn't walk or speak afterwards, and I was in so much pain, I couldn't even turn over in bed." But unfortunately, nobody was as abused as Marilyn Burns. So let's talk about poor old Marilyn. According to Jim Seedow, again, who plays the cook when filming the truck scene, he said, quote, "I was afraid to hit her at first. I couldn't do it. I couldn't hurt her. But they kept telling me it looked fake, and I needed to really hit her. It took me several tries, but by the end of it, I was really hitting her.

• 56:10Lizzie Bassett?

  It actually got to be kind of fun." Okay? In the scene where grandpa sucks the blood from her finger, they initially had a prop knife that was supposed to pump out blood, but apparently it didn't work. So Gunner Hansen actually did slice her finger.

• 56:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh.

• 56:22Lizzie Bassett?

  And Dugan really did suck her blood. And reportedly, they were both so delirious, neither realized that that's what had happened. And when Burns found out, she was really upset. Also, for her final escape, you can tell pretty easily that the jump through the window itself is a stunt double. But they still wanted her to jump from a scaffold in order to capture the landing. And for some reason, they made that scaffold six feet tall. So she jumped and twisted her ankle when she landed, which you see in the movie. That limp that she has at the end is real.

• 56:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 56:51Lizzie Bassett?

  During the dinner scene, when she was being hit over the head by grandpa, Bob Burns had replaced the hammer's head with foam rubber, but the metal handle was still attached to it. And because they're doing a terrible job of hitting her in the head, they did hit her with the handle. So some of the blood that's visible in her hair when they do that close-up shot, that's her real blood.

• 57:10Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 57:11Lizzie Bassett?

  Speaking of which, we have to talk about the inside of that house and the dinner sequence, more specifically, the smell. Bob Burns did use real animal parts, including dogs, to dress the house itself. He said, quote, "We used parts of eight cows, two dogs, a cat, two deer, three goats, two real human skeletons, one chicken, and an armadillo. There were only about 10 plastic bones in the whole set." Makes me think Toby Hooper saw Joe Beth Williams swimming with the skeletons in Poltergeist and was like, "Bah, that's nothing."

• 57:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 57:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Also, remember, this is Texas in the summertime, and there's no AC, so that meat is a cookin'. And when they finished shooting each take, the cast and crew literally ran to the windows to vomit because it smelled so bad. And to make matters worse, because the entire movie takes place in less than 24 hours, everyone had to wear the same clothes for the entire shoot.

• 58:04Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep.

• 58:05Lizzie Bassett?

  This was most appalling for poor Gunner Hansen, who said, quote, "I'm a big man, and we were afraid to send my clothes to the dry cleaners because we didn't want to lose the butcher's blood on the apron. I was running and sweating the entire time. By the end of the shoot, no one would sit next to me at lunch." I think this ended up genuinely being like pretty hurtful for him.

• 58:23Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 58:23Lizzie Bassett?

  At one point, he was told to get out of the lunch line because he stank too much to be near anybody. And keep in mind, Hooper had already told everyone basically to stay away from him. For Marilyn Burns, the shoot was so miserable and physically abusive that she actually began to worry if it might be a snuff film. At one point, they filmed for 26 hours straight.

• 58:43Chris Winterbauer?

  Jesus.

• 58:44Lizzie Bassett?

  Hansen was confused about why they couldn't just break and pick up the next day. And he thought the reason was that John Dugan, aka grandpa, didn't want to get in and out of makeup again. And that was most people's assumption, but Dugan denies this completely, saying this is his first film. He's like, "I would never have made that kind of demand on this." Reportedly, the real reason, and I believe him on this, was that they didn't have enough makeup for two days for him. They only had one. So everyone had to just keep shooting.

• 59:09Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 59:09Lizzie Bassett?

  The whole thing led to a real feeling of mania that spread throughout the set during the shoot. They are sleep deprived, they're exhausted, they're trapped in a stinky meat house, getting hit over the head by grandpa. And Gunner Hansen said, "I distinctly remember Ed saying, 'Kill her, kill the bitch,' just before Sally escapes. But it's not in the script. It's also not in the movie. The cook says, 'Hit that bitch,' and then the hitchhiker picks up the line. But somehow, I heard it as, 'Kill the bitch,' and I was certain at the time that as Marilyn broke free of our grasp, I heard Ed yell, 'Kill the bitch,' one more time. And that is why I, Leatherface, at that moment, said to myself, 'Yes, kill the bitch,' as I stepped forward. I was going to kill her. I had lost any sense of my being in a movie. My transformation was complete.

• 59:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Just for that second, I had become Leatherface. I had lost all perspective and succumbed to method, after all." Fortunately, he took another step forward, shook it off, and was like, "I guess I'm not going to kill this lady on this set."

• 1:00:07Chris Winterbauer?

  But great.

• 1:00:08Lizzie Bassett?

  Jesus Christ. By the way, that moment where Leatherface gets his leg cut into with the chainsaw, do you have any idea how they did this?

• 1:00:16Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know.

• 1:00:17Lizzie Bassett?

  So that's Hansen's leg, and it is him operating the chainsaw. They could not figure out how to get this shot. And apparently, Bob Burns was finally just like, "Listen, we're going to tape a piece of sheet metal around your leg. We'll cover a large area because we're not sure exactly where the chainsaw is going to hit. Then they're going to tape a steak on top of that, underneath your pants, and then a blood bag on top of that." And they were like, "And we're just going to have a crew member just go ahead in there and, uh, cut your leg with the chainsaw." And Hansen was like, "Absolutely not. It is my leg. I will be operating the chainsaw."

• 1:00:47Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:00:47Lizzie Bassett?

  And he did. And fortunately, he didn't slice his own leg off.

• 1:00:50Chris Winterbauer?

  Oh, my God.

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• 1:02:24Lizzie Bassett?

  And finally, in August of 1973, Chris, they were about to wrap, and Dottie Pearl, makeup artist and formaldehyde injector extraordinaire, decided to make brownies for the cast. And the whole cast and crew were thrilled. And they ate the brownies as fast as they could, only to see her suddenly scrambling to hide the rest of them because Toby Hooper's mother had come to set. The brownies were, of course, full of weed.

• 1:02:46Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, you know, the last time I had a weed brownie, I was in, I think I was probably, it was in college. Well, let me say, the last memorable time. And a number of us young men were driving to Reno, Nevada, from the Bay Area. And we stopped at a Baskin Robbins somewhere in eastern California. And turns out, the weed brownies were far more potent than any of us thought.

• 1:03:07Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, yeah, they always are.

• 1:03:08Chris Winterbauer?

  To be clear, there was a sober driver. And our friend Rick, who was an unusual young man, we went to a Baskin Robbins. And the girl who was working there all of a sudden looks at us and she says, "What's wrong with your French?" And we look over and Rick has pulled his shirt up and is rubbing his tummy.

• 1:03:25Lizzie Bassett?

  Oh, no.

• 1:03:26Chris Winterbauer?

  Licking his lips as he looks at all the different 31 flavors. And we're just like.

• 1:03:30Lizzie Bassett?

  I've been there.

• 1:03:31Chris Winterbauer?

  We're gonna go now. We're gonna go.

• 1:03:33Lizzie Bassett?

  Let Rick have his ice cream.

• 1:03:35Chris Winterbauer?

  And Rick was so annoying the rest of the trip to Reno because he didn't get his ice cream.

• 1:03:40Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm to Rick on that one. You can't give a man a weed brownie and not let him get Baskin Robbins.

• 1:03:45Chris Winterbauer?

  It's true.

• 1:03:46Lizzie Bassett?

  But to your point, you know, when you're on a very potent marijuana brownie, it may not be the best idea to also be operating a live chainsaw and cutting down a door. But that is, in fact, what Hanson was doing after they had all unknowingly eaten the brownies. It did, however, give Marilyn Burns an extra edge. She said of the final shot of her driving away in the truck, quote, "When I was crazy at the end of the movie, laughing hysterically, that wasn't acting. That was me having to go back and do it one more time."

• 1:04:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Love it. Gotta love it.

• 1:04:13Lizzie Bassett?

  All right, so it took Hooper almost eight months to edit the film. And according to Bob Burns, Hooper really loved the editing process, but it made it, quote, "agonizingly slow for everyone else." However, in fairness, Hooper, a big part of the reason it took so long is that he was constantly calling the MPAA to see what he could get away with. He said, quote, "I would just call up the ratings people and talk to whoever answered the phone. I would say, 'I know you can't really decide anything over the phone, but I have to know. I have this scene where a girl gets hung on a meat hook. Long silence. What could I do? Long silence. I guess it would help me if there was no penetration shot. That would be correct. And no blood? That would help." So he's taking all of these little bits and pieces and using that to try and get away with, as you pointed out,

• 1:04:58Lizzie Bassett?

  as much as he possibly could. By the spring of 1974, their money had completely run out. The movie wasn't done, bills were piling up. And at this point, they needed money just to pay the lab and get the film back from them. So Hooper was like, "Oh, hello, my old best friend, Bill Head Cheese Parsley. Would you like a larger steak in the film?" And Parsley said, "No." He twirled his mustache and said he wanted a deal where if they couldn't deliver a finished film by a specific date, he would take full ownership of it and finish it himself. So Hooper and Henkel threw a hail mary. Henkel told his friend Bill Whitliffe what was going on, and Bill was a screenwriter. Bill called his friend Joe Longley, a lawyer, and Longley arranged for a meeting for all the members of his weekly poker game at the City National Bank. This is the dentist money.

• 1:05:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Hooper and Henkel pulled together their 12 best minutes of footage and screened it for the poker guys, who at the end of the screening agreed to put up $23,000 in exchange for a percentage in Vortex. Again, this is their production company. So what are we doing?

• 1:05:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Diluting.

• 1:05:56Lizzie Bassett?

  Diluting, yes. It wasn't much, but it was enough to finish the film. And by the end of that summer, they had wrapped the edit. There was just one more problem, Chris. They had no one to distribute it. Columbia offered a $25,000 advance, but they withdrew it a week later. Chris, why do you think they would withdraw their money so swiftly?

• 1:06:15Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know. They saw the movie?

• 1:06:17Lizzie Bassett?

  That's correct. They watched the movie. They watched the movie and they said, "Whoa, no, thank you."

• 1:06:24Chris Winterbauer?

  I saw how the money's on an invisible string. And they're like, "Oh, maybe a little bit across through here."

• 1:06:29Lizzie Bassett?

  Yes. Every big studio rejected it, but Warren Scarron helped them find an independent distributor, Bryanston. Now Bryanston paid $225,000 for the right to release the movie and agreed to give Henkel and Hooper 35% of ticket sales. So this sounded great. This meant that the investors could make back their money right away.

• 1:06:48Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah, the 225 is good. 35% feels, maybe it's not. It feels hair low to me.

• 1:06:53Lizzie Bassett?

  I'm sure it's not good because Bryanston was the company behind Deep Throat. And they were also run by the mob, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly. But also, pretty much for sure, allegedly. In early October of 1974, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre had a sneak preview in San Francisco. And legend has it that people were horrified. They threw up. They yelled at the screen. They threw things. They punched each other in the face. In reality, it sounds like a few politicians were in the audience for a screening of The Taking of Pelham 123, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was snuck in as a double feature. They were very outraged by what they saw. They told the press about it. The exaggerations happened. And many have since speculated that the whole thing may have been a calculated risk by Bryanston to drum up controversy. Of course, it worked.

• 1:07:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Nothing better than "the movie they don't want you to see."

• 1:07:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Listen, these men may be connected, but they knew how to do some marketing. So on October 11, 1974, Texas Chainsaw Massacre premiered, and it was an overnight smash hit because it was marketed as being based on true events, which is not true.

• 1:07:57Chris Winterbauer?

  Nope.

• 1:07:58Lizzie Bassett?

  In any way, it earned over $600,000 in Texas alone during its first four days. Of course, critics paid it basically no attention at first, but as it grew and grew and sawed its way through the box office, they were forced to take notice. And they really were not sure what to make of this. Roger Ebert said, "Now, here's a grisly little item. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises. A real grand guignol of a movie. It's also without any apparent purpose, unless the creation of disgust and fright is a purpose. And yet, in its own way, the movie is some kind of weird, off-the-wall achievement. I can't imagine why anyone would want to make a movie like this, and yet it's well-made, well-acted, and all too effective." The LA Times were less kind, calling it, quote, "despicable, ugly, and obscene,

• 1:08:42Lizzie Bassett?

  a degrading, senseless misuse of film and time." I don't agree. But it turns out some of the cast felt the same way. Alan Danziger, who plays Jerry, said that after a private screening in Austin, quote, "Toby Hooper asked me how I thought it could be improved, so I told him, 'Well, you could turn the chairs so they're facing away from the screen.'" Edwin Neal, on the other hand, would apparently go to screenings at the Village Theater in Austin and would tap moviegoers on the shoulder while he was on screen just to freak them out. He was asked not to come back.

• 1:09:12Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, I mentioned that Bryanston used some clever marketing tactics. They actually used the Cannes Film Festival to promote the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. How, you ask? Well, they got it selected for a sidebar program away from the main competition that was for weirdo, gonzo, like, gawk-at-this-shit emerging filmmakers. It was nothing like the main competition films, but the general public didn't know shit about how Cannes worked in the 70s. So Bryanston was able to say, "Officially selected for Cannes", when marketing the film. Technically true. They also gifted a print of the film to the Film Collection at MoMA in New York. MoMA also didn't really pay any attention to this until Bryanston started saying that the movie was, quote, "part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art."

• 1:09:56Lizzie Bassett?

  And because this was technically true, when reporters started calling the museum, they had to say, "Yes." Now, another part of the reason, outside of the marketing, this movie did so well is that horror tends to peak in popularity when the economy is going down the shitter. And in that case, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre could not have picked a better time. Nixon had just resigned following the Watergate scandal. America was at the tail end of Vietnam with veterans flooding back into the States, disenfranchised, traumatized, and, of course, without jobs to return to. And you mentioned the class elements of this. Film historian Alexandra Heller Nicholas posits that, quote, "You literally cannot talk about the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in any depth and not talk about class, focusing as it does on a disenfranchised family of now-unemployed abattoir workers

• 1:10:39Lizzie Bassett?

  who turn to the unimaginable to fill the void their jobs once filled. The inescapable question at the heart of this film is, what happens to the people that capitalism leaves behind? Interesting take. Plus, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy were operating in the Pacific Northwest and Midwest, respectively, and driving up a fear of serial killers. Couldn't have timed it better if they tried? Now, by April of 1975, the cast and crew understandably expected to see some return on their investment.

• 1:11:05Chris Winterbauer?

  Sure.

• 1:11:05Lizzie Bassett?

  Remember, many of them had waived their salaries or portions of salaries in exchange for points on the back end. But Ed Neal said, "Three months, no check. Six months, no check. Nine months, a check for $28.45." Now, Variety reported more than $12 million in box office in less than a year, but Bryanston's statements somehow only showed $1 million. And even though the film would eventually earn over $30 million at the domestic box office, it seemed that Bryanston's shady alleged connections to the Columbo crime family had made them pretty willing to play fast and loose with the receipts. So let's go back to those lawyers at the poker game. One of them had obviously invested in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He got together with Warren Scarron, Kim Henkel, and Bill Parsley,

• 1:11:49Lizzie Bassett?

  all of whom asked to inspect the financial records. Bryanston said, "What do you think, Chris?"

• 1:11:55Chris Winterbauer?

  Fuck off?

• 1:11:55Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah. It said, no. And so these guys were like, okay, we'll sue you. To which the Pireno brothers, who ran Bryanston, said, "You don't got enough balls to sue me." He was wrong. Robert Kuhn, the lawyer, did file a lawsuit, and the case eventually moved to a federal court in New York. But by the time they had finally been scheduled to argue the case, quote, "It became obvious that the assets were not gonna be readily available." Despite the court ruling that Bryanston had to pay the filmmakers $500,000, they had, of course, filed for bankruptcy. So after the investors got their money back, attorneys and lawyers were paid off. Chris, do you wanna guess how much money was left to split between 20 cast and crew members?

• 1:12:37Chris Winterbauer?

  I don't know. $5,000.

• 1:12:39Lizzie Bassett?

  You're very close. It's $8,100.

• 1:12:42Chris Winterbauer?

  Nice.

• 1:12:43Lizzie Bassett?

  That's horrific.

• 1:12:45Chris Winterbauer?

  And, you know, unfortunately, as much as we might wanna say, "That's just the mob," you know, "they learn from the best." It's very common in Hollywood as well.

• 1:12:53Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, but also, like, you know, obviously, this has shades of the Blair Witch Project to it. But in some ways, this is almost more disappointing, because these people did take pay cuts. They took much less money or no money upfront in order to, in theory, own part of the film. And what they didn't understand is they were owning a part of a part of a part of the film, which then becomes an enormous problem, obviously, when you distribute it via the alleged mob, and then all the money is gone.

• 1:13:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Yep.

• 1:13:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Most of the cast of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre never really saw their careers take off, with a couple of notable exceptions. Edwin Neal did all right, and obviously, John Larriquette did quite a bit better than all right. But a few of them actually took the film off of their resumes because of how much Hollywood looked down on it. So it really didn't even benefit them career-wise, in addition to also not having any financial benefits. Hooper and Henkel earned a development deal with Universal, thanks in part to their friend and shotgun admirer, William Friedkin. But none of those films would come to fruition, and eventually, they left the lot empty-handed. Their next film for Roger Corman Studio, Eaten Alive, did star Marilyn Burns, but it bombed. Hooper went on to then direct the mini-series adaptation of Salem's Lot, or Salem's Lot, and then a slasher film for Universal called The Fun House.

• 1:14:04Lizzie Bassett?

  This was actually unsuccessfully prosecuted as part of the UK's Video Nasty case against uncensored VHS tapes. And of course, in 1982, Chris, Hooper was chosen to direct what movie?

• 1:14:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Poltergeist.

• 1:14:16Lizzie Bassett?

  Poltergeist. That's right. This house is clean.

• 1:14:20Chris Winterbauer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:14:21Lizzie Bassett?

  Now, listen to our episode on that film, but what should have been a career high for Hooper became an incredibly sore spot, thanks to the pervading rumors that he hadn't really directed it. Steven Spielberg had. And Hollywood stopped calling. While both Hooper and Henkel did work on a few more entries in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, neither's career took off to the degree that it, I think, probably should have. In fact, Henkel became so disenfranchised with Hollywood that he left and became a film professor in Corpus Christi, Texas. And I'll end with a quote from John Bloom's excellent piece in Texas Monthly. Quote, "At least one actor, Ed Neal, who played the hitchhiker, can't speak about it without becoming enraged. Robert Kuhn, a trial lawyer who invested in the film, would waste years fighting for the profits that should have been poured into Austin, but were instead siphoned off by a distribution company. Marilyn Burns, the strikingly beautiful actress

• 1:15:05Lizzie Bassett?

  who became the prototype for the final girl in horror films, never realized her great promise. Gunner Hansen, the 300-pound Icelandic-American who played Leatherface, the chainsaw-wielding maniac who inspired Jason and Michael Myers and Freddy Krueger, has spent the rest of his life trying to stake out another identity." And that concludes The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• 1:15:25Chris Winterbauer?

  Debbie Downer.

• 1:15:26Lizzie Bassett?

  Hungry?

• 1:15:28Chris Winterbauer?

  Well, I guess we have to do what went right, even at the end of it.

• 1:15:31Lizzie Bassett?

  We do.

• 1:15:31Chris Winterbauer?

  You know, it goes to show, sometimes it doesn't pay to be first. You know what I mean?

• 1:15:37Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:37Chris Winterbauer?

  To make the mold. Hollywood's always willing to say, "Thank you. We will use this. Go along now," which is unfortunate. My what went right, I have to give it to Daniel Pearl.

• 1:15:46Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:46Chris Winterbauer?

  I think the cinematography remains a high point in this movie. I also ethically have an easier time picking him than

• 1:15:52Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:53Chris Winterbauer?

  some of the other, you know, folks involved. And again, it's a tricky movie to talk about, because on the one hand, I admire the chutzpah and the entrepreneurial spirit behind it. But on the other hand, when you are doing things quickly and cheaply, they can quickly become very unsafe, as we learned. And it's kind of a miracle that no one was seriously hurt on the making of this movie.

• 1:16:16Lizzie Bassett?

  It truly is a miracle.

• 1:16:17Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. So I will give mine to Daniel Pearl. I think this movie looks stunning, especially given the budget and how quickly we just talked about Saw, you know, and how quickly they had to shoot, and how Juan couldn't get the shots that he wanted, you know, et cetera. So we know how much you have to fight for that, and obviously, he did successfully.

• 1:16:34Lizzie Bassett?

  I agree. I think that's a great one. I have to give it to our final girl. I have to give it to Marilyn Burns. Knowing what she went through on this film, it's incredible that she didn't just quit. Like, I would have bailed. There's no way I would have made it through this. And she did. She did her damnedest. She did a great job in what was, I think, genuinely an abusive onset experience. And at the end of the day, I do enjoy her performance. Again, I find it a bit hard to watch, knowing that so much of this was real. But I admire her chutzpah. I admire that she stuck with it. And also, honestly, just a shout out to all of the actors. I think all the actors in this are really, really good and underrated.

• 1:17:13Chris Winterbauer?

  Yeah. There's not a weak point in the lot.

• 1:17:15Lizzie Bassett?

  There isn't. It's very easy to look at this as the acting not being, like, particularly important, because it's so grotesque and it's relying so much on shock. But the acting is actually extremely important in order for this to be even remotely scary. It has to feel real, and I just think all of the actors do an incredibly good job in this. Again, I love Edwin Neal. I think he's great as the hitchhiker. I love, really, everybody involved in this. So I'm sorry, it was a nightmare to make. It is an important movie and a good one to cover for Halloween.

• 1:17:47Chris Winterbauer?

  I agree. Well, Lizzie, if folks are somehow keeping down their lunch and enjoying this podcast, how can they support it?

• 1:17:54Lizzie Bassett?

  You can tell a friend or family member, "Hey, go listen to What Went Wrong. Get yourself some meatloaf and, uh, turn on the Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Actually, don't do that. I also ate it during dinner, and it was disgusting.

• 1:18:05Chris Winterbauer?

  I was eating, and I actually just put my bowl down.

• 1:18:06Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, just don't need that.

• 1:18:08Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, literally, the first scene of The Corpses, I went, "Oh, yeah."

• 1:18:12Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Chris Winterbauer?

  "I forgot about that. All right."

• 1:18:15Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:15Chris Winterbauer?

  Okay.

• 1:18:16Lizzie Bassett?

  There's nothing you can eat. Not soup, not toast. Like, nothing works.

• 1:18:20Chris Winterbauer?

  No.

• 1:18:20Lizzie Bassett?

  Maybe a cracker could be safe.

• 1:18:22Chris Winterbauer?

  Like, saltines, I think, are fine.

• 1:18:23Lizzie Bassett?

  Yeah, that's fine. So yeah, tell your friend or family member to listen. You can leave us a rating or review on whatever pod catcher you are listening to us on. That actually really does help us. We appreciate it. You can follow us on Instagram or TikTok at WhatWentWrongPod, I believe. And if you wanna go a little farther, you can, uh, subscribe. You can subscribe on Apple or Spotify. You get an ad-free feed, and you also get at least two bonus episodes every month. Usually, it's more. This month, we are doing something very special. We're doing Box Office Book Club. You still have time to join this. And if you would like to be part of the live taping of the Box Office Book Club episodes, where we talk about having read the books and watching the movies based on those books, you can join for $5 on Patreon.

• 1:19:06Lizzie Bassett?

  That gets you access to the live tapings of these episodes. But if you are a subscriber in Apple or Spotify, don't worry. You can still listen to those episodes the following Friday after they tape. And then, if you would like to take it one step further into the chainsaw blades, for $50 a month, you can get a shout-out, just like one of these. Well, I was born a cannibal's son. They call me Leatherface. And despite what you think, my daddy raised me good, and that means I always say grace. Before we eat, I wanna thank my meat for running right into my sauce. Your baby back ribs were delicious and nutritious with a side of my best called slaw.

• 1:19:48Lizzie Bassett?

  Good food, good meat, good God. Let's eat the following delicious people's ears, nose, eyes, and feet.

• 1:19:59Lizzie Bassett?

  Aaron Julian, Adrian Panqueria, Alex Barrett, Angeline Renee Cook, Anthony Thomas, Ben Schindler, Blaze Ambrose, Brian Donahue, Brittany Morris, Brooke, Cameron Smith, C. Grace B., Chris Leo, Datam Three, Darren and Dale Coquelin, Amzodia, Evan Downey, Felicia G., Film It Yourself, Frankenstein, Galen and Miguel, The Broken Glass Kids, the cast and crew of When A Trip To Brown Town, Half Greyhound, James McAvoy, Jason Frankel, J.J. Rapido, John D. Wilshire,

• 1:20:42Lizzie Bassett?

  Jory Hillpiper, Julio and Archie Gonzalez, The Disgusting Brothers, Karina Kanaba, Amy Elgashlager McCoy, Lousy Susan, Lydia Howes, Mandy Rarlinson, Marc Bertha, Matthew Jacobson, Yee-haw, Michael McGrath, Nate Full Stop Ashley, Nate the Knife, Never, ever do an Australian accent again, please. Pete Reed Peterson, Rosemary Southward, Rural Jer, Sadie, just Sadie, Snowy, Salman Chinani, Steve Winterbauer, Suzanne Johnson, The Provost Family, The O's sound like "Oooh." Good food, good meat. Our meals complete.

• 1:21:28Lizzie Bassett?

  Until next time, sleep well, my tasty treats.

• 1:21:38Chris Winterbauer?

  Thank you, Leatherface, for that. Next week, we are coming back at you guys with a movie that begs the question, if Michael Jordan was that bad at baseball, wait until you see him act.

• 1:21:51Lizzie Bassett?

  Yay!

• 1:21:52Chris Winterbauer?

  I'm just kidding.

• 1:21:53Lizzie Bassett?

  No, you're not.

• 1:21:54Chris Winterbauer?

  He was actually very good at baseball relative to 99% of people, just not relative to major league baseball players. Yeah. We are talking Space Jam, one of my childhood favorites that I haven't seen since childhood. Do your dance, da-da-da. I just like the Basketball Jones sequence, where Charles Barkley and Sean and all the other players have lost their skills. Basketball Jones, I forgot about it. I have not seen this movie since I was seven, and I remember it being one of the greatest movies ever made, so...

• 1:22:21Lizzie Bassett?

  All right.

• 1:22:22Chris Winterbauer?

  It is going to be an "Is it great or were you a of all time for me?" I cannot wait to dive into it with you guys. And it's probably just gonna be mostly Bill Murray, so I'm just really excited.

• 1:22:31Lizzie Bassett?

  I don't remember it at all. I think I've seen it once as a kid, so we'll see.

• 1:22:35Chris Winterbauer?

  All right, guys.

• 1:22:35Lizzie Bassett?

  All right.

• 1:22:37Chris Winterbauer?

  We'll see you next week for the jam.

• 1:22:39Lizzie Bassett?

  The Space Jam.

• 1:22:47Speaker 04

  What Went Wrong is a Sad Boom Podcast, presented by Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer. Post-production and music by David Bowman. This episode was researched by Laura Woods and edited by Karen Krupsov. Outro music by David Bowman and Stefan Paul George.