Before becoming a filmmaker, Tobe Hooper, a native of Austin, Texas, spent the 1960s as a college professor and documentary cameraman. In 1974, he organized a small cast that was made up of college teachers and students, and then he and Kim Henkel made The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). This film changed the horror film industry. Hooper based it...
I've kind of talked that one to death, really. I've been asked that so many times that I feel the record should be straight already. The genesis of it came from an article in The L.A. Times: When we were shooting the practical location on the house, the first two weeks of filming were exterior, so I had second-unit shots that had to be picked up in the front of the house. I was in the back of the house shooting Robbie [actor Oliver Robins] and the tree, looking down at the burial of the little tweety bird, so Steven was picking those shots up for me. The L.A. Times arrived on the set and printed something like, "We don't know who's directing the picture." The moment they got there, Steven was shooting the shot of the little race cars, and from there the damn thing blossomed on its own and started becoming its own legend. Really, that is my knowledge of it, because I was making the movie and then I started hearing all this stuff after it was finished. I really can't set the record much straighter than that, because Steven did write the screenplay and there are other credits on there, but it came down to Steven and myself sitting at his house.
2
[on Cannon Films] Cannon was really a good company to work for, actually. They made hundreds of movies. They did not have that many hit films, but both Yoram and Maneham just loved movies. They loved films and loved the filmmakers and really treated them well. Or at least they treated me well, and I'm sure they treated most people well if they loved making films. I had a three-picture deal with them, and they basically said, "Do what you want to do." There was some guidance, but not like today. It seemed more, when I was there, like maybe what the old system was like. I miss it. I miss that kind of showmanship and chance-taking.
3
[on Lifeforce] It was more like career murder. But I'm really proud of Lifeforce because no-one will ever be brave enough to do a movie like that again. Even now, people watch that film - with its massive budget - and think "what the hell?" But I knew that in time it'd be considered cool. Quentin Tarantino told me he went to see it many times when it first came out. It's one of his favorites. I'm kinda happy he understood how cool it was, even back then.
4
[on The Funhouse] Well, it wasn't the film I expected to be doing. I actually thought I'd come off of 'Salem's and do something like Eyes of Laura Mars. But this was available and they really wanted me to do it. The writer, Larry Block, talked me into it over the course of 48 hours. It wasn't the film I expected. It surprised me, so my approach to it was probably lighter, less stressful.
5
[on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake] It didn't have the context of the times but it was effective in its own way - in particular the scene where the group of friends approach the house and all you see is Jessica Biel's ass. I loved that.
6
[on the look of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)] It was my second feature, and I'd shot a lot of documentaries and television commercials. So I had quite a lot of experience. I came into it knowing exactly what I wanted and I did have an excellent director of photography, Daniel Pearl, who was just out of film school. So he and I together got the look down.
7
I haven't seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) on the big screen for many, many years. This 40th anniversary restoration is absolutely the best the film has ever looked. The color and clarity is spectacular, displaying visual details in the film that were never before perceptible. The newly remastered 7.1 soundtrack breathes new life and energy into the film. I am very much looking forward to audiences experiencing this film as they never have before.
8
[on the 40th anniversary restoration of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)] It has been entirely restored, it looks so beautiful on the big screen now. It's like a new movie.
9
[on horror] You've got to send a physical sensation through and not let them off the hook. I like to make it faster and faster and faster and pumping and banging until I get into you.
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Fact
1
Unlike his near contemporaries such as George A. Romero and Wes Craven, who have always longed to work outside the horror genre but have been creatively pigeonholed to stay within it by happenstance and the film industry, Hooper has always been attracted almost solely to horror and science-fiction films.
2
Was originally offered the script for Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) but turned it down. Spielberg then suggested Hooper direct Poltergeist (1982), a project he had written himself and had planned on directing. Hooper took the job and Spielberg himself directed "E.T.".
3
Had worked on a sequel to his The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) in 1980 with screenwriter John Milius. Although that project fell through, Hooper would eventually direct a sequel in 1986 for Cannon.
Was fired, in mid-production, from two films--The Dark (1979) and Venom (1981)--before directing Poltergeist (1982), his biggest success to date.
6
The three films he made for Cannon--Lifeforce (1985), Invaders from Mars (1986) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)--were all drastically re-cut by the producers and failed at the box office. Hooper then began working in television, where he's stayed, with only a few exceptions, since the late '80s.
7
Was inducted into the inaugural class of the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival Hall of Fame on October 22, 2005, in Tempe, Arizona.
$16 Million
