Interviews
Kim Henkel [ writer/director ]
KH: Robbie's a big guy, and he's usually a very gentle, soft-spoken character, although he has his moments. Once he put on that mask and he got that chainsaw in his hands and we turned him loose, he was transformed. He was truly frightening swinging that thing around, even though the chain was not engaged, and he was cutting his way through those woods. It was the first time, I believe, that he had really cut loose with that thing in close quarters with the crew around. He seemed to be out of control, honestly. People were just scattering and diving behind trees and into the bushes right and left.
KH: There were a lot of long, hard, hot nights. And then, when we finally got around to shooting in the days, I think Austin had been in a drought for god knows how long, something like 60 days and it was the middle of August, with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees. It was so hot the sand underfoot would burn your feet. It was pretty miserable out there. We had people falling down right and left from incidences of heatstroke if they weren't careful.
KH: As far as the cuts that Columbia/TriStar made to the film before its release: The first scene, in which you see the principal character of Jenny [Zellweger] in her home situation, was excised entirely. Why, I don't know. You'd have to ask Columbia/TriStar about that. Her home life, in that scene, was shown to be pretty unpleasant, and I'd hoped that would resonate with what was going on later in the film. I've always described the film as a black comedy about dysfunctional families, and we see one side of it with Jenny's domestic life and the other side of it in the dilemma with the ghouls. Not much else was changed in any radical way. Bits and pieces were knocked off the head and tail of a scene to shorten them up. There are a couple of scenes in the picture which I think come out just a little bit choppy as a result of it, but nothing too serious.
KH: I had hoped that the film would benefit all of the people involved in it. I think it's really a good showcase for a lot of talent, not only the cast, but I also think we had some excellent work by some people in our crew. I had hoped it would lead to some recognition for all of those people involved, myself included. What has resulted, of course, has not served that purpose at all. And I think that's directly a result of the release being token at best.
Robert Jacks [ Leatherface ]
RJ: My first night on set I had to use a chainsaw for a couple of minutes. [ The crew ] had showed me that it just cuts like butter through these tree limbs. I tried it, and that was it. So I was up for my scene -- I had to cut through these saplings to get to Renee -- and I had to do this sort of viciously, and then run myself out of camera. So I started to do it, I was hacking through these tree limbs, and suddenly everybody in the entire company leaves their posts because they thought I had gone insane. Absolutely everyone except for Levie Isaacks, the cinematographer, who realized that I knew what I was doing. To this day, half of them still think I really went crazy and the other half think, "Wow, this fag can really do this." That was pretty funny because I hadn't heard of anything like that happening on a movie set before.
RJ: I remember the shoot was extended for a few weeks and then we had to come back a year later and do reshoots. The whole time, it was 17-hour days, out in the woods, in the dark, with bugs crawling all over you. The chainsaw was heavy -- 40 pounds -- so whenever I had to do running scenes, the crew would be off-camera holding a blanket up to stop me while a stunt man would grab the chainsaw. We were all so emotionally damaged by the end of the third week or so that Renee and I called a meeting with the director and the producer because we were so beat up and so bruised up that we just couldn't take it anymore, you know, mentally or physically, which is unheard of. What you see in that movie is exactly what we went through. There isn't anything in there that's fake. It's all real.
RJ: Working with the crew was actually pretty fun. Because of my role, I was able to deflect any kind of bullshit that they'd been given, and so they would beg me to throw a fit by nine or 10 in the morning so they could do all the shots inside. I'd find an appropriate time and then just throw a big fit so they'd close down the set. I really loved the crew. They were troupers.
RJ: On the opening weekend in New York, Debbie Harry went with some of her friends, and she called afterwards and told me that they laughed and screamed and jumped and had a real good time. Chris Stein thinks it's the best out of all the films. Exene Cervenka adores it. Viggo Mortensen, Exene's husband who was in the third installment of the series, thought it was great. As far as people that I know who have seen it, they weren't just buttering me up about it, they really think it's hysterical. I think that it lives up to what it is, but, you know, I think it has to be promoted in that kind of a way.
Lisa Newmyer [ Heather ]
LN: It was a crazy shoot. Very long. One thing that was interesting about it was that it was shot in sequence. You know how most films are shot totally the opposite -- you can shoot the last scene on the first day and like that, right? On this film, the beginning of the shoot was the beginning of the movie, and the end of the shoot was the end of the movie. So it was pretty exhausting from that point of view. The first couple of weeks were really fun, you know? It was all the easy stuff. And then, as it went on, we were doing mostly night shoots, in Bastrop, so we'd shoot from say, seven in the evening until seven -- sometimes 10 -- in the morning, the next day. So it got pretty grueling. And it became more violent. It just kind of progressed. It became more exhausting -- and more disturbing -- as the material got more physically demanding. It was fun, up to a point.
LN: There's a scene where I'm on the porch swing and Leatherface [ Jacks ] comes up behind me and throws me into a meat freezer -- that whole sequence was shot in 10-hour stretches. I couldn't move the next day. Kim [ Henkel ] said that in the first film they did it with a pantyhose harness, but that didn't work this time, so they ended up making this pretty industrial harness for me, and it took us maybe two days to shoot because we couldn't get it right. It had to be shot as Robbie pulls me out of the freezer and it had to be smooth, it had to flow as he put me on the hook. He had to actually lift my body way up over the hook and pull down on it, and do it all looking natural.
LN: It is what it is. It's a classic B-movie. Twenty years from now it'll probably be as popular as the original. If you have a sense of humor, see it, if you don't like horror movies, then don't go see it.
Robert J. Kuhn [ executive producer ]
Executive producer Robert Kuhn spoke with The Austin Chronicle
about the tangled legal history of Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.
AC: What is the status of the many lawsuits that have resulted from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation"?
RK: As we speak, there are no suits. What happened was that Chuck Grigson, the trustee for the owners of the original Chainsaw, had
licensed the property to Kim Henkel and me to make this new film. Then of course, we made the deal with Columbia/Tri-Star who, in their
contract, had agreed to do a theatrical release. This was signed effective of October of 1995.
AC: So the film had actually sat around a number of years before it actually got to Columbia/TriStar?
RK: Well, yes and no. We didn't actually finish the film until 1994, when we got the post-production done. We had made the deal with
Columbia/Tri-Star much earlier in the year. We had to satisfy a ton of different things, legally as well as actual product. In other words, we had to
make all kinds of different versions of the video transfer and all sorts of post-production stuff, all of which of course they threw in the trash because
they changed the name of the film [ from The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre ] . And then they also re-edited it in some fashion.
In any event, Columbia/Tri-Star entered into this contract before anybody really knew who Matthew McConaughey or Renee Zellweger [ the two
leads in the picture ] really were. They had agreed to do the theatrical release and to spend no less that $500,000 on prints and advertising. Well,
they actually started gearing up to do the theatrical release and even put trailers out on their video releases saying "coming to a theater near you" in January, and then in June of 1996. Originally, they wanted to hold the film until after the release of Jerry Maguire with Renee Zellweger, which
didn't seem unreasonable to us. So that came and went and nothing happened. Then they started telling us that, off the record, CAA [ Creative Artists Agency ] , which is Matthew's agent, was putting pressure on them not to release the film theatrically. In any event, we sued Columbia/Tri-Star, and then ultimately decided that we were not going to be successful because the arbitration provisions in the contract were so
strong. We dismissed our cases and are now preparing to file another lawsuit against CAA, for interference with our contract. That will probably be
filed this week.
AC: How did the film get to CFP? Did Columbia/TriStar farm it out to them?
RK: Yes. Interestingly enough, we did a deal with CFP before Columbia/Tri-Star to do a test market for us. We had thought that maybe CFP would
do a theatrical release, but as it turned out they weren't that impressed by the test market to agree to do that without taking all the rights. Of
course, we ultimately ended up giving Columbia/Tri-Star that anyway, but they gave us $1.3 million, and CFP wasn't in a position to do that.
AC: End game?
RK: Well, we definitely feel that Columbia/Tri-Star has not done what they agreed to do in terms of trying to market this film in the best possible
fashion. They have not tried to exploit this film to monetarily benefit us as they should have. They've just low-keyed it. They don't want to be guilty
of exploiting Matthew because of their relationship with CAA, which is the strongest single force in Hollywood these days. You get on the wrong
side of them, you're in trouble.
So I understand their problem, but at the same time, they should have either given the film back to us or they should have done the best release
they could have done. And they haven't done that.
Interviews were found here and here
Home About The Film Picture Gallery Reviews Cut Footage Multimedia
Plot Characters Quotes FAQ Updates About Site Polls Links
