Texas Chainsaw Massacre fans should have no difficulty recognizing at least one of the film's principals in the sequel. McCulloch chainsaws look pretty much like the same today as they did 14 years ago, when one particularly deadly model made it's rip-roaring screen debut. The rest of the cast, however, is somewhat worse for the wear. In fact, with one exception, that of Jim Siedow, they've been slashed out of the sequel. And they are not at all pleased.
The actor objecting most vociferously would seem to least need the money or the credit. Ed Neal, who played the crazed hitchhiker in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, has since gone on to better things. He is a prolific actor in television commercials, has served as an associate producer on a recent, albeit unsuccessful science fiction feature called Futurekill, and owns the Texas Movie Emporium in Austin, making him one of the leading dealers in rare movie posters in the United States.
Neal recounts that, in mid-May, Chainsaw director Tobe Hooper and screenwriter Kit Carson approached his agent, asking about his availability for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre II. Director Tobe Hooper seemed concerned, however, that Neal might not be willing to work with him on the sequel because of the acrimony that resulted from the alleged financial mishandling of the first film.
Neal had never masked his contention that the actors in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had never been fairly recompensed for their work. Or that Stephen King's characterization of the film as indicative of Hooper's "taste and conscience" (in Stephen King's Danse Macabre) owed, at least in part, to the quality of their performances. But Neal's agent reassured Hooper that this would not pose a hindrance.
Neal said that he had not expected to make a financial killing from the reprisal of his hitchhiker persona for the sequel. He knew that Cannon Films, the producers, envisioned Chainsaw II as a low-budget operation, and that Cannon's recent bid for critical responsibility would not be furthered by lavishing Sly Stallone-type contracts on the likes of Neal, Marilyn Burns, Gunnar Hansen, or John Dugan. So Neal instructed his agent to ask for between three and four times scale, roughly $45,000 for the scheduled five-to-six week shoot.
"And a few considerations on the set," Neal adds. "No limos, no 300 lines of cocaine a day. Just the basics, like regular hours and meals." Neal, who makes $8000 a week producing regional television commercials, didn't think his demands untoward. But he said he never received an answer from Hooper or Cannon -- not even a counter-offer.
It never occurred to Gunnar Hansen to ask for that kind of money when approached to come back to the sequel as Leatherface. Freelance journalists and commercial log-home builders generally have lower income expectations. But Hansen was less than enthralled by the offer of scale he received. "I told them that scale is what they would have to give someone off the street. Since I had been an integral part of the first film, I felt that I was worth more to them than that. I just wanted them to come back with an offer that reflected a recognition of that value."
Hansen received something very different indeed. He said that he got a call on April 3 from Pat Orseth, who had been brought on in mid-course as casting director for the picture, apparently in place of Bob McDonald. She was phoning, he said, to confim that he would work for $1,256 a week -- scale less 10 percent. "That's because you're the only one who doesn't have an agent," Hansen said she told him. "The 10 percent is what your manager would have received."
Alarmed, Hansen hired an agent. But the agent complained that "they were playing some kind of a freeze-out." Hansen said that his agent was given the run-around, that the studio would not accept his calls. Finally on April 7, Hansen's agent informed him that he had finally spoken to Orseth, who confirmed that her original offer would not be improved, and that she gleaned from Hansen's response that he wasn't interested. Hansen then called Orseth directly, who reportedly told him that it had been rude of him to hire an agent without telling her. She also complained that Hansen's agent had been rude to her, "which I took to mean that he had asked for more money," said Hansen. Orseth then informed Hansen that they had found someone else to play Leatherface.
Orseth declined to be interviewed at the direction of her superiors at Cannon. A high-ranking Cannon publicist explained that Orseth had come onto the production after most casting decisions had already been made, and that an interview on the casting of Chainsaw II would therefore be pointless. Lou Perry, nee Perryman, who had been an assistant camera operator on the first film but returned to the sequel as an actor, defended Orseth, arguing that Hansen's contentions that she offered him less than scale seemed unlikely. "Pat is a reputable casting director," he said. "She's above that kind of thing."
John Dugan, "Grandpa" in the first film, would have gladly come back for the sequel at scale plus 10 percent, which the studio maintains it was paying the cast. A resident of Chicago, he is now married for a second time, has a daughter, and supports his family working as a bartender, waiter, and occasional cook. When we spoke, he had just returned home from Taste Of Chicago, where he had completed a six-hour shift over a smoking barbecue, a job he obviously did not enjoy, but which was good for $5 an hour.
Dugan had done some industrial film work since working on Chainsaw -- his only feature to date. He also has a short film on USA TV and he occasionally works in theatre. But he has not been able to pursue an acting career properly. Some months ago, however, he learned that Hooper, in the course of an interview, had said that he "would be very interested in talking to John." The reporter relayed the message to Dugan.
Dugan spent five days trying to reach Hooper in Los Angeles. After the third day, "I realized that Hooper was dodging my calls." Dugan recounts that he finally reached Orseth, who told him that Hooper had never seriously considered him for the role. "I had the feeling," he said "that Tobe was standing right next to her, trying to make sure she got it right."
Marilyn Burns is now appearing at the Hotel Hollywood in Los Angeles, where she has a supporting role in a musical "playography" called "Sinatra." The show has garnered some positive local and national notice despite its somewhat adulatory regard for Frank Sinatra. Burns has also done some feature work, most recently in Ed Neal's Futurekill. Years ago, she had appeared in Tobe Hooper's rather awful Eaten Alive. She had not been asked back for the Chainsaw sequel, which she finds "disappointing," though not unexpected. She is no longer a nubile 20 year-old, ripe for victimization.
Chainsaw II unit publicist Scot Holton argues that there had never been anything sinister in Hooper's ultimate reluctance to recast the principals of the first picture. Ed Neal's character, he explained, had been run over in a truck in the first film. "He's like the dead parrot in the Monty Python sketch," he said, "an ex-hitchhiker."
According to Lou Perry, however, Neal could easily have been nailed back onto the Chainsaw II perch. "They were planning to put Neal back in with tire tracks on his face," said Perry. "But he was asking for a fortune. Ed's agent told me that they had the idea that Cannon was not going to give Tobe the money [to produce Chainsaw II] unless Hooper signed him and Marilyn and Gunnar. So Ed would not negotiate. Tobe did call him, but they just would not negotiate."
Holton maintains that Hansen maneuvered himself out of the running by vascillating: "At one point he agreed to do the film. Then he changed his mind, saying that Chainsaw had never done anything for his acting career, that after the movie, he hadn't even been able to get a date." Meanwhile, time was bearing down on Hooper, who was engaged in the final edit on Invaders From Mars and concurrently barrelling into the pre-production of Chainsaw II.
"We finally settled on somebody who we felt could imbue the character of Leatherface with an emerging humanity," explained Holton, "something of the quality that Charles Laughton brought to Quasimodo in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame."
Lack of time, said Holton was principally responsible for denying John Dugan a crack at a comeback. Holton admits that Hooper had, indeed, considered bringing Dugan into the production. But the break-neck pace to meet the August 22 release date on Chainsaw II prevented Hooper from following through. "And since Grandpa appears under a ton of makeup anyway," said Holton, "it was easier to cast someone out of Austin."
As for Marilyn Burns, Holton maintains that she had never been written into the Hooper/Carson script. "Her character is referenced in it as going terminally insane from her experiences in the first film" he explained. "Carson said he felt it would have been redundant to put the same character through the same scenario a second time around."
Burns' tempered response to her predicament would seem to owe to a realization that it would not serve any purpose to run into or against Cannon or Hooper on this issue. Or perhaps to her awareness that, of all the actors who had been involved in the first film, she had suffered least with regard to reimbursement for her efforts. Since the distribution rights for Chainsaw were picked up by New Line Cinema about five years ago, she has been receiving detailed, quarterly statements for her shares in MAB, as well as regular, if not sizeable, quarterly dividends.
The actors who owned shares of the profits -- but not of MAB -- consequently did not receive any dividends when the sequel rights to Chainsaw were picked up by Cannon. In fact, New Line Cinema had also bid to produce Chainsaw II. New Line President Robert Shaye said he's sorry his bid didn't prevail -- "We could have done a quality job with it."
But according to Robert Burns, the original's art director, New Line may never have had a chance to begin with. Burns said that Cannon had exacted the sequel rights to Chainsaw from Hooper in return for their backing his Lifeforce and Invaders From Mars. Henkel had only controlled 50% of the stock ncessary to deliver the sequel rights to Cannon. But Henkel reportedly convinced his sister, a minor stockholder in MAB, to turn her shares over to Vortex, Hooper and Henkel's company. Then, Hooper and Henkel apparently obtained court authority, in Texas, to transfer the sequel rights to Cannon, a move, said Robert Burns, "which the other 49 percent of us totally opposed."
Henkel had engineered the deal expecting to cowrite the sequel with Hooper. Moreover, Henkel said that he had believed that Cannon Films held the best hope for the shareholders in both MAB and Vortex. "Whatever you hear about them," he said, "at least they are a legitimate organization and do legitimate business. A strong bid had been put in by two of the original investors, and I did not feel it was in the best interests of the owners of the rights to sign them over to these people."
Unfortunately, Henkel overlooked his own best interests in assisting Hooper. Soon after he had induced his sister to sell off her percentage, someone who knew both Henkel and Hooper took Henkel aside and said, "Kim don't you know Tobe's no friend of yours?" Later, Henkel realized that he would not be cowriting the script to the sequel with Hooper. Nor, some sources say, has Henkel been paid for some of the elements of his own work that they contend have been incorporated into the script. Hooper, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is reportedly maintaining that such elements, if they exist at all, had been devised by himself to begin with. Henkel would not comment on this issue.
Contentions that Hooper has been forced to pay the Cannon piper by directing Chainsaw II, however, tend to fortify the suspicions of Ed Neal and others that the way the picture was cast is just one more indication of the sequel's lack of aesthetic integrity. Chainsaw II, like many films produced by Cannon, has been presold to over 1,000 theatres across the country. Said one source close to the production, "They've already made their money, so they don't give a shit whether the original actors are in it or not!"
Neal said that he doesn't believe Hooper ever fought to obtain more money to cast the original principals. One reason was that Chainsaw II had initially been budgeted at $2.5 million, though it had been allotted $4.5 million immediately prior to production (engendering charges that the movie was "wildly over budget"), and Hooper couldn't justify the additional outlay. Another, said Neal, is that Hooper probably wouldn't have been given the money if he tried: "My understanding from a friend who works at Cannon, is that they were very displeased by his previous directorial efforts." Said somebody else close to production, "Cannon put a lot of money into Tobe's last pictures, and they both cratered out."
"Now," said this source, "Tobe's doing Chainsaw II, which he's been trying to escape having to do for all these years. Because if it doesn't go well, it will be the final nail in the coffin. And if it does, it will demonstrate that Tobe's major talent seems to be directing Chainsaw movies."
"Untrue and unfair," countered Wayne Bell, the sound mixer on Chainsaw II who worked on the first film as part of a two-man sound crew. "Tobe has a personal commitment to keeping his vision of it [Chainsaw II], rather than just shooting something and letting Cannon whip it together. He is very enthusiastic about getting the movie he wants on film."
For the moment Hooper and Cannon are indeed calling the shots. The jilted principals of the first film might not like the way the sequel's been cast, but surely Hooper and Cannon are within their rights. Robert Burns, however, says there's another way of looking at the issue, a moral point to be made, "If you were an integral part of one of the most successful endeavors in Tobe Hooper's history," he said, "would you do the sequel for minimum wage? And especially when you had been ripped-off blind on the original?"
Gunnar Hansen said Burns is right on the money, though he notes that his eyes did not exactly light up with dollar signs when he learned that he might be cast. "The irony is that $10,000 is a nice bit of money for eight weeks' work," he said. "But I got taken the first time, as we all did. I simply wanted some indication that they were conceding something.
"In Chainsaw, we never really knew who screwed us," continued Hansen. "We had a feeling we'd been taken by the distributor, but maybe also by the production company. A lot of people took their piece of meat out of Chainsaw before the people who put their blood into it got theirs. We just felt that #2 would give us an opportunity to get something out of the first film."
Ed Neal contended, moreover, that Cannon's or Hooper's decision to scrimp on salaries may not only have been bad manners, but also bad business. "If these people at Cannon are the astute businessmen people say they are," he noted, "why didn't it occur to them that they could have wrangled $2 million in publicity by rehiring the original cast?" Neal said that he learned that several national newspapers and magazines had expressed interest in publishing articles about the Chainsaw principals and their doings during the last 14 years. "But when they heard that nonentities had been hired instead, their interest just dried up. So they saved themselves, say $125,000 to $175,000 in salaries, and lost out of the opportunity to hype the thing properly."
Neal said that he had attended a science fiction convention in Houston recently, and learned that the fans there were irate over the casting of the film, and were planning to petition the producers of the sequel. Neal claimed he told them it would be a fruitless gesture. "But it would have been apt. If they had called the sequel something else, I wouldn't have said a word. But they called it Chainsaw II, and that has all kinds of connotations!"
Chainsaw II publicist Holton thinks that Neal's market analysis is somewhat off the mark. The only market likely to be affected by the casting policy, he said, is that comprised of hard-core Chainsaw fans. "I don't think the broad-based market is even aware of who the actors in the first film were. If they were Robert Redford and people of that caliber, there would be good reason to think about bringing those people back. But who are Neal, Hansen or Burns?"
Or Dugan, for that matter. Just a guy with a tough nut to crack who thought he at least had a break coming to him. "Sure it was legitimate for Tobe to cast the movie the way he wanted to," said Dugan. "Tobe doesn't owe any of us jack shit! But damn it! It would have been nice to have been able to do the picture, get some publicity, maybe a career boost, the possibility of another job. It would have been a fun way to spend the summer and make some money. And it would have been the gentlemanly thing for Tobe to do."
~Cinefantastique, Vol 16 No 4/Vol 16 No 5, October 1986~
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