The film, which you are about to see,
is an account of the life and career of one man,
in particular, Gunnar Milton Hansen.
Being a private person outside of his film career,
not much is known about his early life.
Common knowledge is that he was born March 4th, 1947,
in Reykjavik, Iceland.
At five years old, he, his mother and brother,
moved to the United States where they settled in Maine.
At 11, the family moved to Austin, Texas,
where he attended Austin High School
and played football for their team.
After graduating, he became a computer operator
and enrolled at the University of Texas,
majoring in English and mathematics as an undergrad.
As a graduate school student,
he continued to excel in English
while also delving into Scandinavian studies.
While in college, Hansen discovered theater
and began acting in plays.
It was in 1973 when Gunnar met Tobe Hooper
and Kim Henkel, independent filmmakers
who were searching for an actor
to play the terrifying killer, Leatherface.
That film would start Gunnar Hansen down a career path
he never would've expected.
A film that became one of the most well-known movies
in cinematic history.
That film is where our story of Gunnar begins,
with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
I first met Gunnar in the wardrobe trailer on location.
I was just a little kid,
and it scared the living shit out of me.
I made a few movies with Gunnar.
I had Gunnar in for a signing here at Dark Delicacies
for his book, which is called "Chainsaw Confidential,"
and we became friends.
We just became very good friends.
I thank the powers that be
that I got a chance to meet him.
He was like a mentor.
We were on a movie called "Shudder."
Whenever we opened a convention,
Gunnar was one of the go-to guys.
I was in a couple films with Gunnar Hansen.
I maintained a good friendship with him.
I'd gone to a club in Hollywood to see the Haunted Garage.
That began a 30-year friendship.
We had almost no money. He still trusted us.
I'm the writer, director of the independent film,
"Rachel's Attic," which featured Gunnar Hansen.
We had pizza or something. I had dinner with Leatherface.
My dinner with Leatherface was always cheese grits.
Mm.
Him and some of the people working there
were gonna go to a diner.
I get to eat with the real Leatherface.
By the end of that dinner, I was absolutely in love.
Theresa just kind of phhkk over
- because of the red wine. - Touche.
Faceplant into the potatoes, but...
How about your phone number?
I don't remember who paid.
- I hardly know you. - But that's the idea!
You gimme the number, we get to know each other.
So he would take his dates
to see "Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
and then he would take them out for dinner
and then he would never hear from them again.
He lived in my house during the course of the movie.
We did get to see him for breakfast and dinner and lunch.
We would always go to the 99, have dinner.
I always tried to get Gunnar shit-faced.
I've had at least three meals with Leatherface,
so I've dined with him many times.
I've had dinner with Leatherface.
I've had lunch with Leatherface.
I've had breakfast with Leatherface.
But more importantly,
I've had all of those meals with Gunnar Hansen.
Gunnar. The man, the myth, the beast.
I actually got involved
with "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" by accident.
When I was in college, I was in a couple of plays.
People had approached him about movies before.
But he had never taken up on it.
After I got out of school, I ran into a friend,
who I'd been in one of the plays with.
A friend of his joined the conversation and just told me
that there were these, I was living in Austin, Texas then.
And they told me that there were these guys in town
who were going to be making a horror movie,
and they were looking for someone to play the killer.
I was there when the script arrived.
He read it, and then he handed it me and said,
"What do you think?"
And I said, "This is..."
I think that there was a fantasy.
There's fantasy in all of us.
He was reading Norse sagas all the time,
and they're pretty bloody.
So I don't think it hit him as anything particularly bad.
He needed the money.
I mean, we all needed money back then.
I just thought,
"Well, that would be an interesting summer job."
That's really how I thought of it.
No one in America can pick up a chainsaw now
without thinking of Leatherface
and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
And that really is a strange and wonderful feeling.
Real-life Gunnar Hansen was probably the furthest thing
from a scary person you can imagine.
However, when I was 15 years old,
and the original "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" came out,
he scared the crap out of me.
I remember the first time I watched it.
We were young and we all went to the drive-in.
It was a carload.
We expected to see a horror film, but not that horror film.
I was working at a theater on the east side of Fort Worth
called the East Lancaster Showcase.
It's this new picture that's taken the country by storm.
Just like "Night of the Living Dead,"
I think it was constantly playing theatrically
across the country for years.
After the crowd comes in and I sell them their snacks,
I shut down the snack bar, and go in to watch the movie.
It couldn't have been farther from what I was expecting.
The only other film I can think of besides "The Evil Dead"
that might have caused that kind of chaos
and mayhem in a theater was "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
with Gunnar Hansen.
I grew up on horror films, going back to the early 60s.
Back then, this is before the rating system kicked in.
Horror movies were essentially made for kids.
You're acting like a child!
They're coming for you.
Look! There comes one of them now.
At some point they slapped an R rating on it.
Well, I saw this film, and now I have to walk home, alone,
which was a little over a mile, walking down the white line
in the middle of the street,
because I don't want to get too close to the houses,
'cause I'm sure someone like Leatherface
is gonna jump out and get me.
And when I saw it, I was amazed at how frightening it was
at an unconscious level.
My brother and I collected 16-millimeter prints.
Oh yes, don't forget the film.
This projector is the easiest and fastest to thread.
Most people can do it in 30 seconds or less.
One time we got "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
In 16-millimeter, there were only two big reels.
All of us were so disturbed,
and I literally remembered when the first reel ran out,
we took a vote to determine whether or not
we were even gonna watch the second reel.
I was living with my boyfriend at the time.
He was out of town.
I couldn't sleep for three days, I was so scared.
So I had to rent a VCR player from a local shop.
Back in the day, when they were the size of a house.
This is a demonstration of a home videocassette recorder.
The very first video that I rented was,
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
Our kids ask what a VHS tape is.
Their grandparents will tell you.
I went out and bought two tapes.
One was "Eraserhead,"
and the other was "Texas Chainsaw Massacre."
And I wore that thing out.
We saw it on laser disc.
That's right, that's how old I am.
For about the same price as a new VCR,
you can enjoy movies the way they were meant to be seen.
The movie titles now number over 4,000,
with new releases every day.
I don't know if I was like eight years old at the time.
Three or four years old.
I have flashes of memory of it.
It freaked me out because I thought it was real.
The rumor back then was that it was true.
Like it was basically a documentary.
I think as a young kid, they were saying,
"This is based on a true story."
And where you're like,
"What? That, no, this really didn't happen."
"I'm telling you, dude, it did."
A lot of people still think it's a true story, you know?
It was shot on 16-millimeter,
and it feels like it's so raw and real.
It does feel like a documentary, even the way it's shot.
It feels like it's really happening.
It just oozes realism.
It almost feels like a documentary.
It literally made me so nauseous.
But it was great. It was so good.
The thing that I hit on about "Texas Chainsaw"
that's the most terrifying for me,
is it could really happen.
One, it has happened.
We've seen it time and time again with Ed Gein.
Albert Fish, H. H. Holmes.
There's people like that out there.
Many people did not know who Ed Gein was
before this movie came out.
People started asking about it.
Stop!
Quiet!
Everybody's got an uncle who worked at the state prison.
That's where Leatherface was housed until he passed away.
Leatherface.
Still running around, up and down them Texas hills.
I remember distinctly when the credits started rolling,
and the music kicked in,
this is right after he's swinging the chainsaw around.
I felt like I had been woken from a nightmare.
"Texas Chainsaw" gave us hope,
that you could pull a low budget movie outta your butt
and show it and people would go crazy for it,
and would be remembered.
Got great script, great actors, great score,
editing, the camera work, all of it.
It's top notch.
I was already on my way to the foolish pursuit
of making movies and it just made it even worse,
and cemented it even deeper.
There's just something about that film, man.
It's the aura, the atmosphere of that movie.
There's them that laughs and knows better.
"Texas Chainsaw Massacre" demarcated a shift
in the horror genre from something
that was more of the Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi style
of Euro sophistication, and to this style of movie
that was not only a commentary on the corruption
and destruction of the American middle class,
but a different way to treat the audience.
I think maybe it was supposed to be a little more
tongue-in-cheek than it came off as terrifying.
It gave me my interest in horror as a viewer.
So there's all these police photographs and close-ups.
Horrible, overly lit close-ups of these
skeletons wrapped around these tombstones.
Who would do that?
Well, guys like Gunnar Hansen. That's who.
Leatherface is primal.
I think if I was getting killed by Leatherface,
I would still probably smell the leather, though.
You know how leather has that smell? Yeah.
From the very first time you see him bash Kirk's head in
with a sledgehammer, and he slams that door.
Vroom.
It's terrifying.
It was so effective.
That's like an iconic scene, you know?
And then the other guy wanders in,
gets killed right after that.
That right there is enough for him to to be a legend.
Nobody really met him or saw him in costume
until they first encountered.
So we want it to be shocking when they did.
His intention was to stay away from the cast
as much as possible.
Really, all he wanted the cast to do was be scared shit less
when they saw him.
You didn't want anybody to see my face,
'cause he was at the time, well, later in life too.
He was a very handsome man.
The first time that I tripped up the ramp,
and looked up, and it was O-M-G, I'm fucked.
It's that shocking scene where he jumps out,
he hits the guy, slams the door shut.
You wondered what was behind that mask.
They blindfolded me, and I just,
I really was worked up into a tizzy.
And then they yell, "Action," boom,
I go into the kitchen, I see the hook,
just to make sure they had two of the grips behind me,
and pulling me down just as the hammer.
And here's this big guy, I'm a munchkin.
That was really my first time actually
getting to see Gunnar.
He then takes Teri McMinn,
throws her back into the freezer,
and then Gunnar runs around the house,
freaked out and panicked.
He's hitting his head.
There's something about just the humanity of him.
He's the monster. He's the bad guy.
But he's the human monster too, but he's the monster.
He had such presence on the screen.
You were really afraid of him.
Yet there was also something sympathetic about him.
And I think that's what he brought.
He's like the protector of the home.
He's the protector.
Hell, it looks like he even takes care of the house.
I think it took a long while for people to realize
that he took on three different roles.
It wasn't just a simple thing for him
of just throwing on a mask and running around going, "Rrr."
He didn't approach it that way.
He viewed it as a legitimate acting exercise.
We didn't have a great deal of direction.
So we were pretty much coming up with our own characters.
And he came up with most of what he did on his own.
I mean, nobody else who's played Leatherface,
I think, can hold a candle.
13 years ago, audiences across America
were horrified by the savagery of a faceless killer.
When they were going to make the second one,
and he asked for decent pay,
and they didn't wanna give it to him,
citing that anybody could wear the mask.
"Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III"
rated R.
What he was asking for was not anything outrageous at all.
They just completely flat out said no.
All Cannon wanted to do was pay scale.
The line producer in particular completely stonewalled
and said no,
and did not really understand the value of having him.
And so anyway, it didn't work out.
If you were to take that same example
and switch it around into the world of women,
it would be, I could get anybody in a bikini.
Like you're completely worthless. You don't matter.
I would definitely insist on it,
and really, really not take no for an answer,
if I could go back in time.
I think it upset him or held a grudge about that.
That he wasn't treated as fairly as he should have,
because he was an iconic presence.
It's something that stayed with him forever.
I don't think he appreciated that very much.
The nice thing about Gunnar
is that he really took his business seriously.
This wasn't a game to him. He was a serious actor.
He really put some thought, some work into it.
To just play him off like he's just a guy with a mask on.
Well, they're wrong.
Gunnar Hansen's portrayal,
and interpretation of Leatherface changed the game.
He was the first of the masked villains, wasn't he?
I mean, aside from "Phantom of the Opera" or something,
I guess.
But there was nothing like that before.
He was part of that brand new movement
in the horror genre.
Gunnar always said that if you took the mask off,
there's no face underneath.
He is like the OG, is that what the young people say now?
He is like the OG, man.
You get an idea.
This is kind of what we want to see,
but it requires the actor to bring it to life
and make it real and give it its quality.
I was definitely taken in,
and felt like all characters on that level, all villains,
all serial killers,
need to sort of envelop that kind of visceral tension.
There's a lot of different facets
that kind of tell you what this man brought to the role,
and what it meant to him.
The language that he made up,
the little sounds that he used and all that stuff,
that fell outta his head and everything.
Ibi. Like I-B-I.
Ibi, that's all he ever says. Ibi.
I think in terms of the hierarchy
of classic horror characters,
he would have to be in the top five.
And he's nonverbal.
I mean, there's some grunts and groans,
but there's no dialogue.
Leatherface is all physicality.
You ever won a trophy?
- I have. - For what?
Horror icon from Universal Pictures.
Gunnar Hansen actually went to a home
for mentally challenged people and the disabled
to kind of inform his role in the way that he threw himself
into this role.
He had gotten in touch with some people
who worked at the state school, and that kind of thing.
So he watched some people with their movements
and then he listened to them talk.
Tobe asked me if I were crazy.
And I said, "No, not the way you're asking it."
And then he said, "Well, are you violent?" And I said, "No."
And he said, "Well, can you do the part?"
And I said, "Oh, sure."
He knew he wanted me for the movie
when I came for the interview, because I filled the door.
I was the biggest actor who tried out for the part,
or asked.
So, so much for talent.
For somebody wearing a mask,
he was pretty damned impressively dominating.
So I thought it wasn't just his size,
he had some way of handling himself.
I was so impressed that an actor
could scare the shit outta me
without speaking or using his face.
I was so impressed that you could do that.
And sure enough, years later,
I'm trying to do the exact same thing.
He was a very thoughtful and very feeling person,
and 180 degrees opposite of the character.
That tells me that somebody who's sympathetic, empathetic,
and open to the awfulness of humanity
being such a pleasant person himself.
I mean, that takes something
that I think most people don't have in 'em.
The funny thing is it just continues the same trend.
The guys who play the bad guys.
People that play the most horrible characters,
Are really nice.
Friendliest, easiest to work with.
And the guys who play the good guys are the assholes.
The assholes are the comedians.
We won't say any names, but...
It's kind of a very strange thing.
Like Vincent Price, known to be this creepy,
"Ha ha ha ha ha," crazy guy.
Pity you didn't know when you started your game of murder,
that I was playing too.
Guy was a gourmet cook, you know?
Very sweet, mild-mannered guy,
who happened to play creepy characters.
Leatherface is not Gunnar.
And when other people would play the same role
that he had been in,
he was more than willing to give 'em tips, to coach 'em.
If they had questions, they could talk to him about it.
And it really made the people feel secure in the role,
because Gunnar just started Leatherface.
And everybody that does that role
is standing on the shoulders of that giant.
I was chosen to play Leatherface in the new game.
I just tried to pick up little subtle things that Gunnar did
and tried to bring it into the performance.
When I got the job for part two,
I did steal some stuff from Gunnar, yes I did.
And I admit it all the time.
A couple little moves here and there like that,
'cause all the different characters are all different.
All the different Leatherfaces have all been different.
The original's the original. And you cannot replace that.
There were certain high spots that I needed to hit,
just to keep a consistency of the characters.
Focusing on the first two movies,
focusing on his movement alone,
and how I could match that movement.
Then overwhelmingly at the conventions, they respond to it.
They're like, "Wow man, you were so good."
Or, "You really did Gunnar justice."
Or, I mean, those are direct quotes.
I've heard all of those things, and more amazing stuff.
There's only one original guy that set the tone.
So it doesn't matter how good a job someone else does.
That tone has already been set.
I collected everything I could that he had written
and said about "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and not.
I really tried to get inside his head on what he was doing
because it didn't make any sense to me.
When they said, "Oh you're gonna be Leatherface."
What the hell does that mean?
And I noticed right away
that there was no following that performance.
It was completely unique.
I just watched the movie over and over
and could not wait to do the "Chainsaw" dance.
If you've ever tried to fucking lift a chainsaw
above your head with one hand, it's not easy.
People can remember almost nothing about that film,
but they will remember that character.
I mean, he has a lot of fans from "Texas Chainsaw,"
which he deserves, 'cause he is that movie.
I mean, I honestly,
I never considered the man behind Leatherface.
He got it.
And to me, this was the poetry side of Gunnar.
I guess "Chainsaw Massacre" did change my life,
but it was a long time before it did.
Because I worked on the movie,
and then I went back to graduate school.
And the movie came out and it was great.
I mean, it was a big hit right away.
It was very controversial right away.
Marilyn, Bill and I took it off of our resumes,
because it was so controversial.
But I wasn't really interested in working as an actor.
My interest was in writing.
I don't think that he ever really gave a lot of thinking
about whether he ever wanted to be an actor or not.
I think he had some interest,
but not enough that he'd followed it all those years.
After the movie came out, I left graduate school
and went to move to Maine,
and I worked there as a writer for many years,
and actually turned down movies.
He was a poet.
And he lived in a guest house on Mount Desert Island.
And he sent me a book of poetry
called "Bear Dancing on the Hill."
People were calling me and saying,
"Would you be in this movie?"
And I'd say, "No, I'm not interested in this."
I'm writing, I'm not being an actor.
So I actually turned down the original,
"The Hills Have Eyes."
Which was, of course, a great, great horror movie,
which made Wes Craven's career.
The fellow who was the art director on "Chainsaw Massacre"
was the art director on "Hills."
And he called me and said,
"I've got this director who nobody knows,
but he's going to be a big name.
"Can you come out in two weeks and play one of the killers?"
And I said no, which was very stupid of me.
Because I wasn't being asked to move to Hollywood
to struggle and be a waiter, or whatever you have to do.
I was just being asked to go somewhere and make a movie.
In 1987, a friend of mine called me and said,
"My dream has always been to move to Hollywood."
Gunnar Hansen was a friend of Donald Jackson's.
Don Jackson was a guy who lived in Michigan,
who'd made a movie called "The Demon Lover."
And Don called me out of the blue one day,
'cause I had just finished working on a film called
"Shock Waves," with John Carradine and Peter Cushing.
And it was playing in drive-in theaters at the same time
that I first met him.
And in that movie was Gunnar Hansen.
My fear is that for every group like ours
that needs to study the positive side of the occult,
who knows how many others meet in secret
to practice the evil side of psychic phenomenon?
Well, where do I find out about these bad groups?
Ah, that would be difficult.
The practitioners of evil aren't exactly listed
in the Yellow Pages.
I was a fan, or had questions about a movie called
"Demon Lover."
That's really what I got.
I gotta talk to him about "Demon Lover."
"The Demon Lover,"
more terrifying than "The Night of the Living Dead,"
and more shocking than "The Chainsaw Massacre."
And because I'd seen the documentary "Demon Lover Diary,"
and which is a fascinating piece of work,
and if you're a filmmaker, it's horrifying.
The documentary is definitely
a low budget filmmaker's guide to not doing it that way.
Don's always promised we'll be paid
if the movie makes money,
but he never expected we'd draw up a contract
with his promises in it.
Everyone has read the pre-press article three times.
Oh, boy.
Everyone's talking about me and the company
and the union are trying to figure out how to fire me.
He was only out for a couple days,
but he couldn't get out of there fast enough.
I guess him and the director didn't get along.
Got you. Go on.
Okay, that's it.
It's the low budget filmmakers version
of "Hearts of Darkness: The Making of Apocalypse Now."
Whatever could go wrong did go wrong.
It's in itself its own little disaster film,
which is one of the reasons why he said,
"Fuck acting. I'm done."
Years later, when a home video company
wanted me to make something
and they would pre-buy the US home video rights,
I gave them two options.
"Zombie Holocaust," and "Chainsaw Hookers."
The home video company was called Camp Video.
They wanted me to add the word "Hollywood" to the title,
so it'd be like,
"Hollywood Chainsaw," what was it?
"Hollywood Chainsaw Strippers?"
I think it was "Texas Chainsaw Hookers."
This would be "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers."
They said, "Could you put anybody in this movie?"
I said, "Well, I know Gunnar Hansen,
who was in the original 'Texas Chainsaw.'"
And they went, "Oh, that would be great."
The one that got me back into movies
was called "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers."
And in spite of the title, is not what it seems to be.
Oh, well maybe it is.
It's about women, prostitutes in LA
who finish off their customers with a chainsaw.
So I wrote the script and I called Gunnar and I said,
"Here's the deal. I'll fly you to LA."
You gotta stay at my house.
We'll film for two and a half days.
Friday night, Saturday and Sunday, and I'll fly you back,
"and I'll pay you this amount of money."
He said, "Fred, that's the Hollywood dream."
You get a phone call, you jump on an airplane,
you go make a movie, and they fly you right back home.
He handed me the script at one in the morning
on Friday night, and at seven in the morning,
I was up and shooting on the movie.
So, I certainly had no chance to learn my lines.
See, you've stumbled on us at a very bad time, Jack.
Bad for you, that is.
And then "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers," I mean,
you see him on the cover with the big chainsaw.
I think you could tell the movie was gonna be cheese ball,
but it had all the right hooks,
and it had some great shots of Gunnar being
this sorcerer of chainsaw magic.
Fred was like trying to beat Roger Corman's schedule
for "Little Shop of Horrors,"
which was supposedly shot in just three days' time.
But actors are like whores, gypsies and thieves, you know?
I think it's time somebody cut you down to size, Jack.
And they're sort of a new audience evolving
that appreciates cheesy horror films.
There are those who love this kinda movie.
You'll go to conventions,
and you'll see there's always somebody who's dressing
as Leatherface and stuff.
If anything came outta "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers,"
it was the fact that Gunnar discovered a way
to meet his fans through these conventions and stuff,
which had never had occurred to him before that movie.
I think both Fred and Tony Timpone,
who's the editor of Fangoria magazine at the time,
kind of convinced Gunnar that he should be going to cons
and signing autographs.
I was friends with Fred,
and I thought Gunnar would be a great profile
in the magazine and he would also be a killer guest
at one of our conventions.
So I reached out to him,
and he was kinda a little reluctant at first.
I'm the person who really doesn't want
to call attention to himself.
I wear dark clothes,
I come in the room and kind of sit in the back.
So suddenly, in this world of horror movies,
I'm very visible.
And that's very new to me.
We are standing there before a scene.
I said, "Gunnar, do you know how big you would be
doing the convention circuit?"
And he goes, "Oh nobody would want my autograph."
I go, "Are you serious?"
He was a reluctant celebrity.
He was a reluctant movie villain.
That's who he was, but he embraced it.
He loved the fans, he cared about the character.
Once he did come on board, he was in 100%.
Gunnar loved it. It was easy money, he didn't do anything.
He didn't realize he had a following.
And he never stopped doing conventions, I don't think,
till the day he died, off of that one movie.
I mean, the just sort of intensity of the fans
and their knowledge of the film,
and their desire to talk to me.
I've had these great long conversation.
But I really don't believe it's because they're fans.
I think it's because of the new marijuana laws.
Was invited to do an autograph thing at a haunted hayride
in Berlin, Mass, called Spooky Hayride.
I'm Kane Hodder.
And even though I played Jason in the movies,
I'm not really such a bad guy.
This place became huge over the years,
but when we first did it, it was just a hayride.
And at the end of it, there were myself, Gunnar,
and Butch Patrick, of all people.
And the three of us were signing for free
after people got off the hayride.
And that's the first time I met Gunnar.
And we just became very good friends.
Hi, this is Gunnar Hansen,
and I just spent the weekend
with the "Ladies of the Evil Dead."
They are hot, even if they are dead.
In fact, that makes them hotter, if you think about it.
It's a unique thing, these horror conventions,
where people come to visit
and to express their selves as fans.
And so you don't wanna bother the people at the table
or the celebrities at the table
while they're visiting with someone.
But Gunnar always had fans at his table.
Always had fans at his table,
but always, if we did walk by, would...
I would go hang out with him
and he would tell stories of Iceland and his family
and being a writer.
And it was interesting. He was very sweet.
We had a nice relationship.
Oh boy, the conventions with Gunnar were so much fun.
I mean, we had fun.
Only the sick bastards who idolize serial killers
will give a rat's ass about you.
They'll remember me for my killings.
After we made "Hellblock 13," he did a whole bunch of,
he did a big run of photograph.
He signed all of mine, and I signed all of his.
We'd have both pictures on our tables,
so we'd be yelling at the people,
"Hey, come and get it over here.
Come and get it over here! Get it from me!"
And I'd say, "Hey, it's $5 less over here!"
And then I'd look at him and see the look in his face.
"Oh, no, no, no, not really. No, not really, not really."
Trying to figure out the first time I met him.
It must have been at a convention, somewhere.
And I was a little intimidated.
He's a kind of a big guy, for starters.
He's a big man.
I'm six foot one, 225, something like that.
Now, I'm not tiny.
And Gunnar Hansen made me look like a little boy.
The persona that is portrayed in the film
is obviously not him.
I mean, yes, it's helpful to be imposing like that,
to be intimidating like that.
But at the same time, that's the art of acting.
It's funny because the people at these conventions,
they'll go up, and after they talk to you for a few minutes,
they'll go, "Oh, well you're not mean at all."
And yes, there would be people who could be like,
"Oh, I'm not going over to that guy."
It's fine. Some may even say that about Tom Savini.
But Tom Savini is a sweetheart.
He'll show you magic at his table.
He'll talk about special effects of all these movies
he's worked on.
Almost instantly,
within the space of maybe 10 to 15 seconds,
Gunnar would put them at such ease
that you would see their whole body language change.
He had a whole panoply of things
that he would say to people.
One of them which was, "Approach," like the king.
He would go, "Approach, I've had all my shots."
That one was a good one.
"I don't bite, but if I do, it's 25 extra."
Would remember people's names,
and just graciously accepted every person.
It's a shame that a lot of the younger actors
kinda growing into the genre
that are gonna start doing the conventions
and film festival circuit,
aren't going to be able to experience him
because he really was just such a class act.
People would walk away so happy, man.
And they're like, "Ah, we just met Leatherface.
He was such a great guy!"
He didn't just sit there like on a phone or reading a book
and then kind of throw you an autograph.
He engaged with them.
Dude, they could have had Brad Pitt there,
wouldn't have cared.
They could have, I don't know,
Tom Cruise there, wouldn't have cared.
But Gunnar Hansen? Gotta go meet him.
Yeah, I remember one convention where
there weren't that many people in the audience,
and he put down the mic
and just sat down on the edge of the stage,
and was kind of just conversing directly
with the people in the front row like they were at a party,
reached out to them on a personal level,
which you really don't see too much at a convention.
He interacted very well with his fans and with people.
And he was like a gentle giant, essentially.
There's a cliche about the gentle giant.
And that's pretty much like what he was.
He was a very quiet, mellow,
Gentle giant.
Unless he was pissed off.
They were always trying to get these signings
where they wanted him to sign like two or 300 things
at a time for a couple hundred bucks.
He's a very, very smart, smart businessman.
And they always thought,
"Well, I need you to sign 100 of these. How cool is that?"
And I'm going to pay you several hundred dollars.
He was a teacher in many ways.
And it wasn't about like,
oh, grabbing the money and running.
It was like confidence, self-worth,
and get what you do, get what you're worth.
And if he thought for a minute,
you were trying to canoodle or get 15 free autographs
that you were gonna sell in your comic book store,
he would take great umbrage.
Not that guy. Nope, not him.
He owns three comic book stores in Cincinnati.
He'll lie to you.
He'll tell you he's getting 'em for a charity,
and the only charity he's getting 'em for is him.
This is what you're setting up for your worth,
and how people will treat you.
- You're the stone carver? - That's right, ma'am.
You look familiar to me. Have we met before?
No ma'am. You don't know me.
And it was a wonderful experience to be in a movie
where I had time to actually act,
and actually have a character and create this character
and make this character consistent on the camera.
Because this is not what you get to do
if you are what they call the "out of town talent."
We'll fly him in, we'll get him in there for one day.
We'll put his name on the poster, it'll be wonderful.
They forget about you in no time flat,
and then we can hit 'em when they least expect it.
He actually was cast in the movie before me,
and he told the director to hire me
for the part of the evil stepmother.
Don't you play Miss Little Innocent with me!
This is my house now.
They got me a very good day rate.
One of the best I've ever gotten.
So, lessons to be learned from Gunnar.
I mean a lot of the roles he got
traded in on his notoriety as Leatherface.
I'll never forget the first time I saw him in the movie
"Mosquito," because he pulled the chainsaw out,
and I actually saw "Mosquito" when I was younger,
and I didn't realize that that was Leatherface.
But as a kid, I watched him,
he pulls the chainsaw out and he says,
"I haven't held one of these babies,"
"And I haven't used one of these in like 25 years."
I can't remember the line.
13 years, 12 years or whatever it was.
I haven't handled one of these babies in 20 years.
Feels good.
For some reason, I was like,
I bet that's the guy that played Leatherface.
That's a fun little movie.
They fight giant mosquitoes in Michigan.
Well of course, they do.
Anybody who's been to Michigan in July
understands fighting giant bloodthirsty mosquitoes.
I picked up a Fangoria magazine
and they had an article on "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers"
by Chase Baum.
And I'm like, there was a picture of Gunnar,
without the mask or anything.
I'm like, "Who's that?"
I go,
"That's what Gunnar, that's what Leatherface looks like?"
I go, "That's not what I expected, you know?"
And then it hit me. Gunnar Hansen.
Gunnar Hansen with a chainsaw cutting a mosquito. I'm in!
People will wanna see that!
The effects are really good, and had a great cast.
Tim Lovelace, Ron Asheton.
Oh, from the Stooge?
Of the Stooges.
Yeah.
He and his brother founded the band.
Oh, shit!
Well, Ugly, it looks like those mosquitoes
got themselves some dinner.
We're in this barn and he's wielding the chainsaw.
They were gonna put the great big mosquitoes in later.
So he's just swinging it at nothing.
And the chain broke.
And the end of the chain hit me in the leg,
and it cut my jeans open and gave me a scratch.
Gunnar spent the whole rest of the day
feeling absolutely terrible,
because he thought he had hurt me.
And from that moment on we became friends.
I actually still have the chain.
It's in my keepsake box. There's where it broke.
I would pick up some expensive Scotch,
and I would try and get a Cuban cigar or a fine cigar.
Every time I went over to Gunnar's,
and I'd bring it over there.
And that would ensure me a long night
of storytelling and talking.
You boys like to be scared?
Well, as a reward for letting me sit here by a fire,
I'll tell you some scary stories.
He should have been a professional campfire storyteller.
And he could sit there and tell horror stories
and people paid.
Horror camping with Gunnar Hansen.
Ah, Christmas. What a wonderful day. Not always.
He had an appreciation for a movie
that he had done called "Campfire Tales."
He felt like the young people who had put that film together
had really put a lot of heart into it,
and that the end product was entertaining.
These filmmakers in South Carolina
had made a movie called "Campfire Tales."
I ended up becoming a producer on "Freakshow,"
which was their second film.
I am the Freak Master.
I have on display five tortured souls.
When we finished shooting "Repligator,"
my attempt to pull a Roger Corman
and shoot a feature in four days,
the way he had done with "Little Shop of Horrors"
back in the early 60s was only 70 minutes long.
And at that time, to be taken seriously,
you had to be at least 86 minutes.
I took the project to Wynn Winberg over at Aries Productions
and he suggested that we hire Brinke Stevens
and Gunnar Hansen and shoot some additional material,
which is exactly what we did.
Suddenly, you see the enemy moving towards you.
But instead of a stinking sweaty grunt with an M16,
you see before you...
Look, guys who've been in low budget movies,
they don't ask for anything.
They're very humble people.
It's all the people who work on big budget movies
who are the jerks, 'cause they get used to everything.
He knew how much money we had to spend.
I mean he wasn't expecting, sitting around him,
Ben Hur or some shit.
I mean, it was some punk ass kids with a video camera.
Look, I fly 2,000 miles to get you this job,
and you give me this crap?
We wanted to cast him against type.
I didn't want him to have a chainsaw.
I didn't want him to be crazy guy. He's just a guy.
I mean he gets a gun jammed in his mouth and all of that.
I mean, he let Eric rough handle him.
- I swear to God! - Who?
I don't know what you're talking about!
Who?
Gunnar Hansen knew exactly what was going on.
And that's one of the great things about him,
is that he knew and he did it anyway.
I remember one time we were doing,
we were filming "Hellblock 13."
Gunnar's contract was for 12 hours, or whatever.
And I remember we were gonna go over that.
And I didn't want to upset Gunnar,
I didn't want him to think we were taking advantage of him.
But I knew that we needed him longer than 12 hours.
And so I went up to him, I said,
"Gunnar, I'm sorry, listen,
we're gonna go over 12 hours, it looks like."
And he goes,
"You know, these pants you bought me for my character."
"These pants are really comfortable. Can I keep the pants?"
Absolutely. You want the pants? The pants are yours.
We shot this big elaborate funeral scene
at a cemetery in Pontiac, Michigan.
And when we got the dailies back,
we found out that the plate that pushes
the 16-millimeter film had come loose.
So the film was just kind of flopping around in there.
So everything we shot with Gunnar that day was out of focus.
We ended up begging him to stay an extra day,
extra half day, actually.
He agreed, thank God.
Oh my god, there's a large individual
wearing a butcher's apron pushing the dolly with the grip.
And it was Gunnar who's actually
helping push the dolly back to one.
That's the kind of a guy that Gunnar was.
Some people will not sit while you're pulling focus
on someone while they're setting lights.
"Get a PA to sit there. Don't waste my time.
Look, oh, you want me to stand here?
Or you want me to move here?"
Like he knew about film making and what it takes,
especially independent film making.
Where would you go, if you leave?
Cellphone phones don't work around here.
What this town needs is an attraction.
Somebody is killing people back there!
The movie that we did with Gunnar
was called "Gimme Skelter."
And it was a $5,000, like 15-day movie.
The story goes,
he had seen his niece in "Stink of Flesh."
His niece, Christine Hansen, showed the movie to Gunnar,
and he really liked it and told Christine
that if I would write some scenes
for he and Christine to do together,
that he would actually do my next movie for free
if we buy him a plane ticket.
Gunnar did it for free,
just because he wanted to work with his niece.
And he said, "Now, don't tell anybody I did this for free."
The breeding caves of the Pucachabra,
or something like that.
Got no caves and no chupacabra.
It's New Mexico. Everybody has a cupachabra.
Most of the films I've worked on have been with people
who it may be their only second film,
or third film, or first film sometimes.
And they still have this dream about being filmmakers.
They really are passionate about doing their movie.
They haven't learned yet to lie to you.
They eat and sleep and think movies.
So I've always enjoyed working with everybody
I've worked with in the movie.
But on the other hand, I wish sometimes I could say to them,
"Would you let me rewrite the script?"
He had something to say about both the scripts
that I gave him and I took his notes,
because they were incredibly good.
He was a good writer. He knew what he was doing.
He knew what he was talking about.
I ended up bugging Bruce Campbell,
who was helping me produce my first movie.
I was like, Mike, you gotta put somebody in that box.
Someone's gotta see somebody's name. It's a horror movie.
You gotta get something like Gunnar Hansen.
Eric, we have to talk.
We have nothing to talk about.
I want to apologize for the past.
At the time he wasn't a producer yet.
He was just mentoring me, or as he likes to say,
"tor-mentoring" me.
My buddy Mike Kallio had met Gunnar at a convention,
and approached him.
Being a huge fan of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,"
I was like, "I gotta meet Gunnar Hansen."
Would he give you a letter of intent?
Which is such a classic thing that actors hate doing.
Would you give me a letter of intent?
I don't have the money yet,
but if you help me raise the money, then I can pay you.
He gave me some dough to get Gunnar to sign a letter
- of intent. - For 500 bucks,
I guess he said he would do one.
So I loaned Mike the 500 bucks to get Gunnar in the movie.
We ended up raising half the money we needed.
We broke escrow, so we started shooting.
And we hired Gunnar to be in the movie for two days.
He had to hit June. And he completely changed.
And then he'd come off set,
and he's like super nice and talking to me,
and then he's like getting beat with a toaster.
He was there to shoot, like he knew what he was doing.
And that was quite inspiring, actually,
to watch somebody like that.
He was back and forth a lot,
in Michigan doing another project called "Mosquito,"
where I poached, I think, four or five.
I know I poached at least four actors.
There might be a fifth, I'm not sure.
There's a low budget connection and a Michigan connection.
You combine the two, everybody knows everybody.
So I think Gunnar went from one low budget
friend/Michigan connection to the next.
And by the time he did seven movies,
then there was no other filmmakers left in Michigan.
So he had to go.
I like to talk about Ronald,
the character that Gunnar Hansen plays in "Rachel's Attic."
What'd she say?
Don't let it bother you.
So when Gunnar had read the screenplay, he said,
"This seems very real to me."
And I explained to him, this was actually a memory of mine.
When I was eight, I had a good friend named Jeff.
And Jeff and I would go off in the summers
and we would go into the woods, and we were off the trail.
And I looked up and I saw this large person
charging towards me,
and we ran back to the trail and he pulled me
and he looked at me and he was very angry,
and he had a yoyo in his hand, and he said,
"Did you throw this yoyo through my window?"
He said, "I have a farmhouse not too far from here."
And he said, "My window's broken and there's this yoyo."
He told me he was going to bring me back to his farm
and call the police.
So he started dragging me through the woods,
and I started screaming and crying.
And my friend picked up a rock and he threw it
and it hit this person in the back and ran out of the woods.
It was one of these things that kind of stuck with me,
and kind of scared me.
But what happened later was actually even more scary.
About a month later, a boy my age, who was eight,
was walking through the same woods
and was stabbed to death 40 times.
And they never found the person who did it.
It was kind of a mystery.
Gunnar jumped on board with it and said,
"I would love to be a part of this movie,
and help you tell the story."
Had some great conversations about character and background
and what it might have motivated Ronald to abduct children.
Do you yell at us and let us go?
Yeah, yeah. Just yell at him.
Leave us alone, mister!
Gunnar Hansen doing a Round the World!
Whoa!
Steve Clyburn was the college roommate of Gunnar Hansen.
We thought, "Yes, we should try and find a way
to get Gunnar in our little movie."
I came up with the idea to do a little homage to "Jaws,"
the scene where Quint enters the meeting
at town held by the chief,
and proposes to save the town from Jaws.
Well, we kind of riffed on that theme.
You know what I do for a living, mayor.
You know why I come down here.
Promises the town that for a little bit of cash,
he'll be able to save the town.
I can take care of it.
It's just a question of whether I do it now, or later.
He asked me if, "Can I do it in the Maine accent?"
Because he's dying to to do a Maine accent and...
Something's out there. Something unnatural.
He had a Gilligan hat on, for the part, which was great.
And he was dressed perfectly.
We didn't really have a costume for him.
We had talked about some ideas.
He showed up and he was so excited to do comedy.
I just felt like, first of all, he was a natural.
He was hilarious.
Gunnar!
Gunnah.
Gooner.
Gunnah.
We had to figure out a way to get Gunnar in the picture
and then out of the picture in a day.
It.
And then he got to play a role in a movie
called "Brutal Massacre."
That's the greatest thing
about working with Gunnar on "Brutal Massacre."
His character of Crenshaw was so much fun.
He plays a guy named Crenshaw, who's this,
just whacked out Vietnam vet that rents a house
to a bunch of filmmakers looking to make a horror movie.
We're scouting locations for a film.
What kind of film?
Ah, a horror film.
- Oh nice. Need a killer? - Yeah.
'Cause I was in fucking Vietnam.
He has like two or three scenes,
but he steals every scene in it.
You sure it's okay for me to do whatever I want
to the house?
Oh, I don't give a fuck.
Fuck, shit, do whatever you want, fucker.
I'm just gonna tear the motherfucker down and rebuild it.
Want a beer?
No, thanks.
I play actually a comic character.
So it was a great pleasure to work.
And I'm hoping,
it's been getting very, very good reviews in America.
So I'm hoping that it really is a film
that people get to know.
Want a beer?
Oh, shit, yeah.
Somebody turned around, he'd just be standing there,
"Want a beer?"
And he has this weird thing with his fucking eyes,
where he's like,
"Want a beer?"
What he brought to it, and the delivery of those lines,
is the reason why we were like,
"We have to make a sequel,
and we have to make Gunnar the head of this whole thing."
There was some kids killed for real in these woods.
Fuckin' a.
And I thought, Gunnar was excellent at doing comedy.
'Cause he just had that twinkle in his eye
when he delivered his lines.
This is like an untapped part of Gunnar
that people should like grab,
because he was hilarious in that movie.
I thought there was some really funny moments
in "Brutal Massacre."
I know that it had its own little cult following.
Crenshaw, as whacked out and as nuts as he is,
was much closer to Gunnar than Leatherface was.
Hi, this is Gunnar Hansen, with a frog in his throat.
That's because he was tasty.
And the cat has shit on the cat.
Are you making this up?
Yes, of course I'm making it up!
No, he has post-traumatic stress...
Uh oh, it's the rubber glove.
Is this the part where I become your bitch?
You know you can't be dyslexic and have PTSD?
Oh I feel this strange feeling.
I'm worried about you.
You are? But here's the punch line.
So I start laughing and I say,
"Buck, when the fool shits where?"
Talk about your victim.
Words like notorious are often used
to describe the occupants of this room.
Oh, oh, and I wanted to say,
"Kids, if you sit at home and you watch movies,
and you talk, when you go to the movies, shut the fuck up."
Heard you buried your wife?
Yeah, I had to, she was dead.
He liked to mess with people on the set too.
So that was a lot of fun.
A lot of times the actor that he was playing off of
didn't really know if Gunnar was being serious,
or if he truly was insane.
And I think Gunnar really got off on that.
So William, they found a body down at the harbor.
We thought it might be you. So what was he dressed like?
Well, he had a blue watch cap on a red shirt and hip boots.
Was them hip boots turned up or down? Well, they were down.
Couldn't be me. I always wear mine up.
I tell that joke and people would say, "What?"
Another night of heavy partying.
Because I'm fit as hell,
and I'm gonna to stand around while you sit.
You're the meanest actor ever.
Oh God,
you look grand in that light, lad.
Oh, thank you, yes.
All right, I'm ready for my closeup now, Mr. DeMille.
He is this smart, very well-spoken,
very well-read gentleman.
It's a testament to his talent.
He also, I think, he wrote two books.
Both of them are kind of significant.
I had Gunnar in for a signing here at Dark Delicacies,
for his book, which is called,
"Chainsaw Confidential."
I'm quoted quite a bit in the book,
and that was a very interesting time to spend with Gunnar.
He let us tell how we remembered it,
and then he put it all together.
Like the Japanese play, "Rashomon,"
where they have all these witnesses to a crime,
and they all tell completely different stories.
I think it was kind of the first time
that I had a real chance to collaborate,
because everything was kind of iffy all the time.
I don't know, I think the union might have shut us down,
if we had one.
They couldn't afford any fancy artificial foods.
They had the real stuff.
And the real stuff didn't get changed out.
So you had this meat sitting there for days on end.
It was so hot, the birds were walking.
It was hotter than a stripper in Miami!
And it was just an awful smell
when you walked into the dining room.
Oh, he could never change his costume.
So I wore the same clothes for 28 days.
This was a low budget movie, so there was no safety,
there was no OSHA on the set.
So many people would say,
"What was it like? Blah, blah, blah."
And he was getting tired of answering those questions
and he had a career outside of this movie.
So I think that's why he wrote the book.
I fought a 350-pound man holding me for 10 hours.
By the end of the day, I was unable to walk,
unable to turn over in bed, and I had no voice.
It was awful.
And he takes a saw and puts it inches from my head
and starts cutting.
I could feel splinters coming out of the table,
and then I could feel hot oil coming off of the blade.
And I'm just going, "Be still, be still, be still, be still.
You don't want to move."
There is going to be a problem if you do.
Because of the mask, right, he had this kind of vision.
He could not see peripheral, he had no peripheral vision.
He had very limited vision because the holes in the mask,
the eye holes were kind of a couple inches,
inch or so away from his face.
Her costume is very, very dangerous.
Can you see the things that make it dangerous?
What about that mask?
If you were wearing that mask, here's what it would be like.
Which I'm so glad I didn't know.
I wouldn't have done the scene.
So we did manage to have a few laughs.
It's not worth it if you don't have a few laughs.
Okay, there's the scene where Marilyn
is running for her life and she makes the right turn
through the little picket fence opening on a dime.
Boom, boom, right through the door.
It didn't quite work out that way for Gunnar.
I know he's not gonna make it.
So I go, "Oop, oop, oop, oop, oop, oop, oop, oop!"
Hooper turns around, "What the hell?"
Jimmy see that and we're like...
Gunnar pointed out, he said,
"Ed, we can get away with all kinds of crap."
I said, "What do you mean?"
He goes, "What are they gonna do? Fire us?
They can't fire us."
I said, "Why not?"
They've already shot 10 minutes of the film.
One night,
I think it was just about the last night of shooting.
In walks this person with a tray full of magic brownies.
Gunnar had several brownies, as he tells the story,
because they were so tasty, large man that he is,
and the rest of the crew also ate these brownies.
After a while, we realized that nothing was getting done.
And eventually they were falling out,
and they just couldn't function anymore.
And I remember them just laying around
and some of 'em passing out, going to sleep.
Gunnar was sitting in a rocking chair,
going back and forth, saying, "Time has no meaning."
Tobe and myself and Gunnar and Marilyn carried on,
the four of us.
Gunnar being well stoned on these brownies.
We could get away with all kinds of crap.
I said, "Oh, cool."
So we did. Yes, we did.
You look at a guy like that and you say,
"Is that guy a poet? Is that guy a published poet?
Is that his passion?"
You would say, "No, he's probably sawing logs,
or building a log cabin somewhere."
He looked like a big giant lumberjack.
This is a huge, hulking man. "I want to write poetry!"
Okay, of course you do. And nobody's gonna tell you not to.
But he was, in fact, a poet,
and extremely intelligent.
Of course, meeting him,
you realize how weird movies are nothing like reality.
He was much more well-rounded people
than a lot of folks get.
He listened to classical music all the time.
Kind of a Renaissance guy.
He'd plot out the time that he was gonna do it.
I've read his poetry, which is amazing.
You can get a sense of the type of person
that he was through that,
'cause I immediately got this image
of him as Ernest Hemingway.
I think Renaissance Man fit him very well.
He was a man of many interests and talents.
He had an IQ off the charts!
He had a genius IQ.
He was actually a part of Mensa at one point, but he left,
because he said there were far too many alcoholics in Mensa.
Wasn't his crowd.
So I'm editing a poetry magazine
called "Lucille."
Every time I saw him,
he always remembered that we would always talk about books
and literary recommendations.
This is a cat that wrote books
about the estuaries of Maine.
And he told me that he was writing a book,
and I wanna say it was about rocks.
He was like a professor.
I had an English teacher in college
at the University of Texas.
He was good friends with Gunnar.
Sometimes Gunnar would teach the class.
Only Gunnar Hansen could actually make me go,
"Are you serious? What? Tell me more.
How do I learn about this? I will read that book!"
I really enjoyed a book that he put out
about the barrier islands of the southern United States.
"Islands on the Edge of Time."
It's a natural history book.
Really looked at it,
the barrier islands from a environmental point of view.
Don't figure you think Leatherface
is gonna write a natural history book.
The first novel I wrote, it was really bad.
I mean, it was just a bad book, and I'm glad I wrote it.
And I have the, I still have the manuscript.
He wrote, as much as anybody.
Up in Maine, very idyllic kind of life
he had up there forever.
He had built a studio out back,
where he could do all of his work,
where he could do his writing, and it was beautiful.
You walk in there and he had his nice big desk and his chair
and he had his collections of books
and movies and things like that.
Every, oh two years or three years, I open it up,
and I read little part of it, and I'll say,
"Oh, there's a nice sentence."
A lot of 'em are multi-talented, but I couldn't.
I couldn't write a book if my life depended on it.
A number of years later, I wrote another one,
which was actually quite bad, also.
So I may be actually very capable of writing bad novels.
I think he did it, as what he told me,
was just to amuse himself, more than anything.
He didn't give a do do if the book sold at all.
This one I'm working on and I hope is better.
I mean, if this one isn't good enough to publish,
then I'll go back to writing for film.
He'd written up some poetry.
I think he wrote a book about Henry Lee Lucas.
Leatherface doing a story about Henry?
Serial killer, Henry Lee Lucas.
How have you never told me this?
And he went into this whole story about him
and his writing partner and how they were researching this.
And they discovered that Henry Lee Lucas
was essentially full of shit,
and had not killed any of the people
that he claimed credit for.
But that Gunnar and his partner on that project
ended up shutting it down because they were getting
not so veiled threats
from a lot of the law enforcement people
who made their bones on the Henry Lee Lucas case.
How many more stories do you have, man?
The first project that we had worked on,
called "A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time."
It was a story of this wonderful little island
off the coast of Maine, called Isleford.
Gunnar had gone and interviewed all the people out there
and put together a script.
And then I came in later to shoot the project.
And it took a couple years.
And it was a great, great story about wonderful people.
And it's been shown many, many times
on a local Maine public television.
He was very interested in Native American culture.
Gunnar had a great affection for the Native Americans
of the state of Maine.
Gunnar was the writer and director of this film
about the history of the Passamaquoddy Indians.
Beginning in the late 1800s,
countless Native American children
were sent to residential schools
throughout the United States and Canada.
Often these children were carried to schools,
hundreds or even thousands of miles from their families.
Why would DHS be so quick to take Native children,
especially in cases where there seems little evidence
that they are in danger?
I feel that the reason for that would be
to destroy the tribe, to eliminate the culture,
eliminate the ways of Native people.
He loved people. Humanity.
He was a humanitarian, essentially.
He did a documentary on a ship builder,
actually a boat builder, out in Maine.
Chummy Rich called me up one day and said,
"Hey Jeff, you want to do a story about the last wooden boat
I'm ever gonna build?"
And I went, "You got any money?"
And he went, "Nope."
I was born, brought up in the boat-building business.
And I really enjoyed it, and I've enjoyed it ever since.
So I called Gunnar and said,
"Would you work on the script about Chummy Rich
for a little or nothing?"
And he went, "Fine."
It just showed that in situations like this,
when you love boat-building or whatever it is,
Acadia, or the state of Maine,
the money is not the most important thing.
One of the advantages of working as an actor
is that it allows me to work more on writing projects
that aren't gonna pay me right away, if ever.
I can think of writing as a bad habit,
and acting as the work that supports that bad habit.
So what do I do now?
Well, just act natural.
Yeah, yeah, act natural.
Okay, maybe not that natural.
Almost every character Gunnar played was different.
He cared about every role he played.
He was a really good character actor.
Would you run from me?
I'd make it my life's goal to hunt you down
and cut you to pieces.
The guy played a Nazi in "Murder-Set-Pieces."
SSV to Hauser, in Deutschland.
$500, American.
He shot a horror movie in Iceland,
called the "Reykjavik Whale Watching Massacre."
Today we are very proud to be number three on the list,
over the top 10 whale watching countries in the world.
You'll see that it's completely different
in all those movies.
He wanted to experiment,
and I think that's why he liked the smaller films,
is because they gave him the latitude to experiment
and to actually do some acting.
And it all came full circle
when he got a gig on a "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" sequel.
After all the years of being shunned
by various executive producers and studio heads.
We were on his front porch.
His agent called, and let him know
that he'd worked out a deal
where he could appear in "Texas Chainsaw 3D."
He got a chance to come back to a sequel to the movie
that started it all.
Hangs up the phone and he goes,
"Well, right now, there's you, me and somebody else,
that know that I'm gonna be in 'Texas Chainsaw 3D.'"
Hi. It's good to see you, sweetie.
- Funny to be back here. - Yeah!
Leatherface Central.
Did you think
they really nailed this design when you saw it?
That's great.
It's like being back on the set, even the heat.
That's where we met Dan Yeager, who played Leatherface.
And he championed him, because that's what Gunnar did.
I met Gunnar on the set of "Texas Chainsaw 3D."
We were two weeks into shooting. I was already doing it.
He kind of reiterated,
because he had said it in an interview before.
The trick with Leatherface is, he is the mask.
You have to embody the mask.
My whole concept was, there just isn't there.
You take the mask off, there's no face.
I only hope and pray that I've done justice
to what you've created.
Now if you watch that stuff on the DVD,
you'll see me totally geek out.
I still cannot put into words
what it means to be standing next to this man.
The huge amount of the success
of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"
is his portrayal of that character.
I mean, obviously Tobe Hooper,
and all the other people involved with the movie
deserve a lion share of the credit
for the overall success of that movie.
But Gunnar is a huge portion of why Leatherface
is still talked about today.
But he took it as seriously
as if it had been a great Shakespearean role.
It's almost astonishing the level of response
that Leatherface generates.
Gunnar's influence in the horror industry.
It's right up there with the true classics.
I think Gunnar stands shoulder to shoulder
with Robert Englund.
He can get right in there now with Lon Chaney,
Nick Castle, Boris Karloff.
He would be on the Mount Rushmore of horror.
You had "Psycho," of course, but after that,
you have Leatherface, you have Gunnar.
Like, that's so iconic.
He really imprinted his character into my brain.
So as an entertainer,
that's all you ever hope to do, is be remembered.
I was fortunate enough for the 40th anniversary
to be invited to Austin, Texas, for anniversary screening.
Unfortunately, Marilyn Burns had passed away
a couple of months earlier.
After all, 70-something now, so...
Actually, I'm only 16.
Everybody else, Teri and John Dugan, Ed Neal and Gunnar,
what a great ambassador for the film he was,
because of that very fascination that he had to meet with
and rub elbows with the fans, and commune with them,
I think plays a very important role
in the long running legs of this film.
It was a movie that happened because of a script,
because of the conditions we were working under,
because of the director, because of the actors,
and because of the crew.
And yet, when you add all those things together,
the movie is somehow is more than that.
I don't know how that happened. That's true.
All of us have been asked many, many times, like to go,
"Did you guys know you were making this film,
are people are gonna be talking about 50 years later?"
No, we'd be a bunch of assholes
if you walked around thinking that.
I look back on those six weeks, we were just kids.
We didn't know what we were doing.
And who knew that it would turn out to be so famous?
And the biggest thing is,
I've been able to be part of something that was immense,
that has become part of American culture.
We take this bad boy,
and hand it over to my brother Gunnar there.
He chases 'em clean away.
Many years ago there was a TV show called "Cheers."
And the actress, who was the female lead of the show,
in one episode is making fun of all her friends
because she's going to spend the weekend
looking after a large house out in the country.
And she's teasing them,
because if she's gonna be in this big estate.
And she's out there alone,
and it's dark and she's very scared,
and she hears the noise and she sits down in the living room
and she hears another noise.
It wasn't anything, it was probably just a tree branch
against the window, or Leatherface.
At that moment, I realized how big this movie was,
that they could say that on an American television show,
and everyone knew what she was saying.
There was more to Gunnar Hansen than just Leatherface.
Yes.
Gunnar definitely left an impact because of his work.
And I guess probably left a better legacy
as being a decent guy.
He inspired people.
I am the cutie with the booty, hottie with the body,
thong-wearing chainsaw-wielding scream queen!
Gunnar had a huge impact on me,
not just as an actor, or as a performer,
but also as a professional wrestler.
And I am the urban legend, the backwoods bustle.
The kill, kill, kill.
Badass Evil Nate with The Black Dahlia.
I'm at the Scare Fest Convention in Lexington, Kentucky.
I'm a 19-year-old kid.
I'm standing in line to get this man's autograph,
to get a photo.
So I get up to him, and I tell him, I said, I'm like,
"Sir, it's so surreal to meet you.
And I just can't believe this is real."
And he just smiles and he's like,
"Well, thank you. And it's nice to meet you."
And then I look to him and I say,
"Sir, and I am a professional wrestler."
My gimmick, as they call it in the wrestling world,
it's all 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'
I'm not the biggest guy, but I do everything I can
"to portray your version of Leatherface."
And I'll never forget it.
He smiles and he says, "It's not the size of the actor.
It's the size of the acting inside of the actor."
And I apply those words to my in-ring persona.
That one chance meeting has changed the course of my life,
and affected me in the most positive way possible.
Duck, duck, goose!
Tina, there you are.
I've been looking for you.
A friend of mine told me I should check out this site
called Chainsaw Sally,
because Chainsaw Sally had a hard on for Leatherface.
A lot of people I think
would've passed over Chainsaw Sally.
But as soon as they see that the original Leatherface
is in it, they immediately pay attention to it.
Working with Gunnar was so interesting
because we met him well before we shot.
We started getting to know him on a personal level,
then we shot.
As time progressed,
there was this point where April and I realized,
He's our friend.
And Jimmyo talks with him on a regular basis,
and they chitchat about writing, because he's also a writer.
It's really neat because Gunnar
has become one of my closest friends.
We talk almost weekly. We just talk about old fart stuff.
We bitch about things, we talk about politics,
we talk about movies, we talk about writing.
He's just turned into a big part of our family.
We love him to death.
One of the last things that Gunnar did.
"Death House" that Gunnar wrote, it seriously has gotten,
I'd say 85% of anyone that's ever worked in the genre
for the last 30 years, in it.
That entire movie is filled with horror icons,
from Tony Todd and Kane Hodder and Sid Haig,
and Cortney Palm and Spooky Dan.
I mean, everybody along the line.
One of the associate producers was Felissa Rose
from "Sleepaway Camp."
It's kind of a salute to Gunnar.
I was just there for him.
I was there committed, and there for him.
And a lot of people were.
A lot of people were there for him.
Nobody had to pitch anybody on it.
It was, "This was Gunnar's movie."
"Yes, I'm in. Sign me up."
To be perfectly honest, I didn't even know what part
I was gonna play when I showed up on set.
I was the first person he talked to.
He said,
"If I do this movie, I really want you to be in it."
And I was like, "Yes, it would be my ultimate pleasure."
You will become transhuman. Better than human.
Once the physical conditioning is completed,
or as you put it, the laundry.
You definitely could feel the love for Gunnar
on that set when people showed up,
'cause people were there for free, or next to nothing.
Or people clamoring just to be extras
so they could be a part of it,
just so they could have a little piece of him.
I was lucky enough to be able to do an extra roll
on it for a day.
But it was kind of nice,
because it sealed the whole legacy for Gunnar.
Well, "Death House" was a movie he and I created together.
We were really partners on that.
The experience turned kind of hollow
because I didn't really have a partner to bounce off of.
Now all of a sudden, like I'm taking over the reins.
It's sad, because I really liked him.
And every so often, somebody hits you like that.
He left a lot of wonderful things behind.
He had some really great stuff he was working on,
that I guess will never see the light of day,
'cause he never got to finish it.
We wrote scripts together,
and it almost seemed like it was natural.
Like, it just happened.
But there was just a connection.
It was like part of the family.
We had developed a movie called "The Orion Project,"
and it really was "Quatermass" film.
And we had Gunnar's character,
which had become sort of this alien thing that had this baby
that it rescued.
And the helicopters and I, my plans were great.
They were grand plans indeed.
But no, I'd always hoped to do that with him.
But it just, it wasn't meant to be.
At the time, there was talk about a new "Chainsaw."
We heard there wasn't really a script yet,
but there were ideas.
So Gunnar came out and I said,
"Man, we gotta do something."
Gunnar goes, "I got this idea for a 'Chainsaw' movie."
At first, we thought it would be a 'Chainsaw' sequel.
But as we started writing it, we're like,
"No, we can't do that. That's a different thing.
I mean, that's Tobe Hooper's."
So we went, we took a premise and said,
"What if we flip it and do this?"
So we took that "Chainsaw" premise, we flipped it,
and we put some other characters in there.
That was a script that Gunnar and Gary had written,
had Robert Englund attached, it had Gunnar attached.
Kane Hodder was attached. They were all playing brothers.
The three titans of terror together again
for the first time.
It didn't get that far.
We just knew that ideally,
we were gonna be working together.
We sat down and we wrote that together
and it's called "The Last Horror Picture Show."
Unfortunately didn't get made and,
Took that around and got a little bit of interest,
got an option agreement on it.
It's one of the regrets I have,
was not being able to get that movie made with Gunnar.
I had a script, I still have a script called "Second Run"
that I wanted him to play himself in.
And he said he would do it,
but only if I made Gunnar Hansen in the script
a complete nitwit and asshole,
because he wanted to play just this broad caricature
of himself.
So, it unfortunately never got to that point.
You had that idea for the Hemingway picture,
which I still love is, it's a shame.
Yeah, I think it's a shame,
because I think Gunnar would've really done a great job.
He would've thrown all of himself
into the role of Ernest Hemingway.
And I think it would've given him an opportunity
to show his dramatic side.
I was always thinking, "Man, I gotta do 'Mosquito Two.'
How do I bring him back?"
I'm like, "Well, you didn't see him really die.
The place blew up."
Maybe he comes out and half his face is burned,
or he's like, he comes back, he goes, "Where's my brother?"
But it was always something we kind of talked about
and joked about.
He made movies that were never finished.
A low budget movie called "Exploding Angel."
We were neck and neck the whole time.
The two biggest drug racketeers in Texas.
A horror, 50s, sci-fi thriller.
"It Came From Trafalgar"
is a black-and-white science fiction horror film.
The film centers around the Zongolians
who are trying to take over the planet.
Gunnar, he plays a serial killer named Tex Pickens,
aka, the Texas Ghoul.
I shot it in seven different states.
I was very lucky and very fortunate
that he liked my goofy monsters,
he liked the hotrods,
he liked the women that was in the movie.
It was something he wanted to do.
Heard you shot your dog. Was he mad?
Well, I guess you weren't too damned pleased.
Oh, God!
I've had quite a bit of trouble
trying to get the film done.
Unfortunately, I guess the easiest way to say it is,
I zigged when I should have zagged.
I mean, this guy was endlessly fascinating.
He pursued so many other things
that were totally, totally different.
He had a very eclectic sort of taking in
of information and things.
The Gunnar I knew loved sailing.
He crewed a lot on really large sailing vessels
and stuff like that.
And I had the pleasure of joining him
and a couple other people one time.
And we sailed down to Friendship, Maine,
which was the birthplace of the Friendships Loop.
The races were a lot of fun.
They were competitive. Gunnar was a great sailor.
He was also a naturalist,
and he loved kayaking the coast of Maine and stuff,
and dealing with the wildlife.
And we talked about stock market and stuff like that.
There wasn't anything he didn't know.
His heart was in meeting people and being around people.
He loved talking to people.
He loved talking to people about their lives
and sharing his stories and things like that.
Writing, that was his main focus and passion.
He wrote many, many articles
for different magazines, and that was his main thrust.
He was a storyteller through and through.
He was writing when he passed away.
He was a man of many interests and talents and...
I'm sorry.
And he's missed by people that knew him well,
and people who just knew the public part of him.
This is Bill.
And we're both ready for our close-up.
I miss him.
Okay, I'm just gonna come in,
and get a little closer.
Okay, smile, guys. This is so hot.
Gunnar was firstly, intelligent.
- An academic. - Iconic.
- A scholar. - Personable.
- Incredibly charming. - Legend.
- He was a mentor. - Underrated.
Funny.
Lots of fun to be around. Full of life.
- Cheeky. - And just a fucking nice guy.
There was really no attitude.
He wasn't the darker side of the business.
He was the light side of the business.
He was a very deep individual.
There was nothing superficial about him.
He's one of those rare guys in the industry
that you come across sometimes.
And it was never an act.
He would really look out for you.
I said something to him like,
"I've never done one of these conventions before.
Can you help me?"
And he's like, "Of course." And he brought pens over.
He told me what to say.
He was the first person to tell me what to charge.
Press or movies or anything,
where he would be in a position to help somebody,
he would do that.
But he wasn't looking for anything in return.
He had a bigger agent than I did at the time.
So I said, "Who's your agency, Gunnar?"
And he tells me and he goes, "You should go talk to them."
And I did. He's like, "We're gonna sign you."
And I said, "Well, let me..."
"No, no, no.
If you're friends with Gunnar, you're getting signed."
If Gunnar was your friend,
he had your back, no matter what.
And I was like, "Holy crap.
I just got a huge Hollywood agent
because I mentioned Gunnar."
He wanted to see good people do well.
I first met Gunnar Hansen at the premiere of my film,
"Malevolence."
Gunnar had gotten a hold of a copy of the film,
apparently loved it.
He came down, he talked to the crowd.
He really got everybody amped up before the screening.
Once you've had some track record,
he gauged what type of person you were,
his friendship would just be really always there for you,
like a brother.
He'd counseled me the whole weekend. He became my buddy.
He was like my big brother.
And then of course I took him over to my parents' house,
'cause I wanted him to meet my parents.
My mom fell in love with him.
She was so smitten with Gunnar.
My mom, she met Gunnar Hansen.
She was very happy to meet Gunnar Hansen.
Oh, when is that wonderful man coming back?
Like mom, not in front of dad!
I remember he would come to my son's birthday parties,
brought him horror movies and things like that.
He's the only celebrity that ever sent me Christmas cards.
I got a Christmas card from Leatherface.
We would write long letters to each other.
"Hey, how's it going? And what'd you think of this movie?"
He'd call us up on the phone, he'd send us emails.
He's the type of guy
that you could reach out to for advice.
He was also very willing to help me and the ladies
that go about getting more conventions,
because we were really new.
He said, "Yeah, you can email me, call me."
He said, "Ask people about themselves
when they come up to your table."
My brother was a getting a knee replacement.
He called my brother and had a conversation with him
about it.
My brother was very, very grateful and happy about that.
Here's this big hulking guy, and then off screen,
he's the sweetest guy.
The dichotomy of the real persona
and the persona in the movie looms quite large
over his legacy, I think.
He was one of the great ones.
Well, he's one of the good guys you don't like to lose.
Erudite, smart, could be charming.
Could be off-putting.
I said, "Yeah, tell him to go fuck himself."
And she was very upset when I said that.
She said, "Oh, we don't use that kind of language."
And I said, "Well, I guess you've never worked in LA."
Could be the biggest guy in the room.
Could be the smallest.
Could be extremely friendly.
Could have a stick up his butt.
I know I'm a little old for it,
but I have trouble accepting the idea of vegetarian chili,
'cause that's an oxymoron.
He was my friend.
And I miss him.
My wife was a health insurance liaison
for a Tennessee oncologist at the time,
which was the biggest oncology practice
in the state of Tennessee.
Anyway, I sent a picture of the three of us together
and she said, "John, Gunnar doesn't look well."
I said, "Really?"
She goes, "No."
She goes, "I think he's sick."
And I said, "I don't know. He didn't say anything about it."
I just talked to him a couple of days before.
And he never mentioned he was sick.
He never hinted to it. Nobody knew about it.
I had written him a couple of emails after that,
and he hadn't responded, and so I wrote him another,
just one line said,
"Are you okay? I haven't heard from you."
And he got back to me
and said he was having some health issues.
And then I found out like a week after that,
that he had cancer,
and it was in final stages and everything.
So...
Oh, fuck.
I think this was the last time
that we did a thing in Austin, Texas.
Gunnar, who was with his agent at the time,
invited me out to dinner.
I said, "Ah, I'm already going to Ed and I'm with,
I don't want to change things now."
Which now of course, I wish I had,
because that was one of the last times
we could have hung out together.
And like you said, I didn't know.
But what got me so choked up was I remember
then they took us to the airport,
and he was catching, his plane was sooner than mine,
and they dropped him off,
and he was kind of standing there at night
under the lights of the overhang all by himself.
And he looked so small.
I knew he was a little sick.
And he just, I just felt really sorry for him.
'Cause I stayed on the bus, and the bus drove off,
and there was Gunnar.
And that's the last time I saw him.
Ah, heck.
He called me, and he said, "You gotta do this show with me."
It's in New Jersey. And it was a smaller show.
And I said, "Gosh, I do a small show like that,
and come all the way up there?"
He goes, "Well, I really want you to do it with me."
I said, "Whoa, well, that's different."
If the promoter says I want you there,
but if you want me there.
I said, "Hey, I really need you there."
I said, "Well, I'm there."
And it was one of those deals
where they couldn't afford all the big meeting rooms,
so they've got half of the vendors lined up
in the hallway with tables.
And we got to, "Ah! Here we are in the hallway."
I said,
"Well, come on. We've never done a show in a hallway."
And so we did this cockamamie show, and we had a great time.
Just a wonderful time.
And I didn't know it, but the sucker had cancer,
and knew he was going,
and knew that was gonna be the last time I got to see him.
So, that's a kind thing to do,
to take that kind of time and to have already had been told
by some cockamamie doctor, "You get two months."
Good grief. But boy, I was so grateful for it.
It really was a nice time.
And so, he's going out.
Eddie's gonna have a good memory, and Eddie does.
When did you hear that he'd gone?
Oh, wasn't too long after that.
Every day, I regret his passing. Every day.
Well, I just was very sad when I heard he had passed away.
I had no idea he was ill.
We have the same agent, Mike Eisenstadt, for years.
Gunnar told him not to say anything to anybody.
And so when we lost him, I really felt a loss.
I really felt a void.
And I wish I had known, because I would've made more time
to either have a conversation with him on the phone,
or maybe fly to see him, or try to get together with him.
And I never got that chance. So I feel sad about that.
He knew what we'd do.
We'd fly up there to Maine,
and take him seafood every night.
He knew we'd do that.
And so he didn't want us to do that,
'cause he knew it would've imposed
a tremendous financial burden on us.
I was just taken by surprise.
However sad it is, when it's unexpected,
and sort of takes you from behind in a surprise sort of way,
that's always really sad.
Robert Burns did the same thing.
But we never saw it coming with Robert,
and we never saw it coming with Gunnar.
Some people don't want the sympathy,
they don't want that in their lives.
They wanna be treated normal and then just move on.
And I respect that.
These are not two guys that called you on the phone
and said, "I'm sick, man!"
That one's the furthest thing from their mind.
It's really unfortunate
that he was taken from us way too soon.
And I miss him terribly.
He was the brother I never had.
And I'm thankful for that.
And I love him with all my heart,
and I miss him every day.
And now he's in Valhalla.
I miss him a lot.
I miss seeing him at the conventions,
and going out to have cheese grits.
I just miss Gunnar. He was a nice, nice guy.
Well, I wished he'd lived longer,
but I am glad that his fans discovered him.
And I'm very happy that he discovered his fans.
The fans loved him,
and we really should have him with us today.
You would just be proud that this man
was your friend and had your back.
I'm just incredibly grateful that I got to know him,
and become friends with him.
I just remember his friendship,
his humor, his intelligence.
I'm sad that my friend is gone, but I will never forget.
How much fun we had together.
A lot of laughs. I love the guy.
Yes, he was a dear man.
He was kind and wonderful, and..
He's missed by a lot of people.
But I was so lucky to have had the pleasure
and to know him and work with him and experience him.
A lot of people didn't get to. And I did.
And I'm thankful for that.
And I'm thankful to feel these emotions
that I feel right now about such a wonderful, great man.
It was a wonderful opportunity in my life to experience it.
And I wanna thank him.
I was honored to be the master of ceremonies
at Gunnar's memorial service.
And when I attended his memorial service in,
it was May of 2016,
which was a wonderful experience to be up in his home,
and around people completely disconnected from his work
in the movies and Leatherface and all that.
It was fascinating hearing about things about Gunnar
that I never knew before.
Things he did, places he went,
and all the respect that he was shown
from all of these people.
So when I got to go there and tell stories about him,
they were looking at me like I just,
they were discovering, like I did, so many times,
a completely different aspect of the life of Gunnar Hansen
that they never knew about.
And especially from all his friends here
on Mount Desert Island.
To hear their stories, just like,
"My God, I had no idea!"
Was there ever a time where Gunnar
just sat around not doing anything?
It seems like he was always doing something,
always experiencing life.
Whatever life threw at him, he went with.
Gunnar Hansen was a why not guy. He wasn't a why.
People say, "Why do you wanna do that?
Or why should I do that? Or why should I do that?"
Gunnar was like, someone comes to you and say,
"You wanna be in this horror movie,
and run around with a chainsaw and put a mask on?"
Why would I wanna do that? I don't.
Gunnar would never do that. Gunnar was always, "Why not?"
For him, it was an experience.
It was something that if he didn't wanna do it,
that's one thing.
But if it was something he was interested in,
and the only thing holding him back
was that he hadn't done it before,
or if he wasn't sure it was gonna work out,
that wasn't enough of a reason not to do it.
Gunnar's attitude was,
"Yeah, that sounds like fun. Why not?"
And that was probably the thing I admired the most
about the man,
is that he was not afraid to experience new things,
whether there was a guarantee
of whether it was gonna work out or not.
I think he had a good end to his life.
And he seemed real happy.
He'd met this lady named Betty.
I'm so glad that he found someone to love and to love him.
He had a beautiful love of his life, Betty.
And thank God that he has such a terrific woman in his life.
A travel film gone awry.
If I was to sort of wrap up my experience
of Gunnar, I would pretty much refuse to do it,
because for me, he's still there.
And I know that's a ridiculous thing to say,
but it doesn't feel like he's gone.
The world will miss Gunnar.
But nice thing about actors, we're immortalized.
When I'm gone,
my kids can watch every crappy movie I've made.
I can't wait.
He'll live forever.
What an honor to have had him in my life.
I only wish it was for longer.
So many lives that you've touched,
thank you for everything that you've been to me,
and that you've been to so many people.
Wouldn't it be amazing to sit down
and have another meal with you?
We would all love to sit down
and have another meal with you.
If I were ever asked,
"What do you hope your gravestone says?"
I would think, oh, well my biggest dream, it would say,
Gunnar Hansen, Nobel Prize, literature. Loch Ness Hansen.
My gravestone is gonna say
"Gunnar Hansen, he had his own action figure."
♪ Dinner with Leatherface ♪
♪ They're setting you a special place ♪
♪ Serving up some barbeque ♪
♪ The next course could be you ♪
♪ Leatherface and his whole family were there ♪
♪ His old man and grandpa in his rocking chair ♪
♪ You screamed from your soul and the echoes linger ♪
♪ And to bring you back sucking out blood from your finger ♪
♪ When you come to again grandpa tries to smash your head ♪
♪ But he drops the hammer so you flee instead ♪
♪ They chase you down the road hasn't this been fun ♪
♪ You shouldn't leave yet ♪
♪ You know it's rude to eat and run from ♪
♪ Dinner with Leatherface ♪
♪ They're setting you a special place ♪
♪ Serving up some barbeque ♪
♪ The next course could be you ♪
Thanks, so I've had dinner with Leatherface,
and I've had coffee with Leatherface.
♪ Dinner with Leatherface ♪
That was no good.
That was perfect.
I was lame.
Gunnar would come out to visit all the time.
So he'd call me up and say,
"Yeah, I'm getting ready to get on a plane."
He goes, "Hey, you want me to bring some lobsters?"
I'm like, "Great!"
So he'd go down to the dock there in Maine,
and he'd take live lobsters and pack in a suitcase with ice
and he'd fly to LAX.
And me and my son, we'd drive down there,
and we had the pot sitting on the stove,
ready to pick him up.
He's got two suitcases, one with clothes, one with lobsters.
That's Gunnar Hansen, right?
And he'd show up, we'd pick up some cigars,
a little bit of booze.
We'd go back to the house, throw those lobsters in the pot,
and we'd go sit out in the backyard and eat lobsters
and smoke cigars and have a couple shots of whiskey
and stuff.
When they did the remake of "Texas Chainsaw,"
he had been offered the role of the truck driver at the end.
And I often asked him, I said,
"Gunnar, why didn't you do that? That's a great role."
"Well, I don't know if I should, or..."
Whether it was the money wasn't right or whatever it was,
but he looked back on it and one day says,
"It would've been cool."
The scene where the girl gets rescued by the truck driver,
and the truck driver is Leatherface from the first movie.
I mean, it just would've been a great twist to that movie.
But he didn't do it.
And, it's like, oh, it is what it is, so...
And he also was a food aficionado. I know.
And he taught me a little bit about Tex. I'm a chili fan.
And we had dinner once in Pittsburgh and I ordered chili,
and he gave me a whole lesson about how Texas chili,
I believe, does not have beans in it.
And all other chili was a lie.
So if I ever had chili with beans,
then I was living a falsehood.
And, with much due respect to Gunnar,
I still love a good bean in a chili.
So I just always think of him though in the lie
that I'm living every time I have a bowl, so...
It's funny, I was recently in Bastrop, Texas,
where they shot "Chainsaw,"
and we were there at this convention.
It was a lot of the "Chainsaw" stars,
and certainly, the crowd was there,
and they were excited and they were excited to be there.
But there was definitely that big gentle giant missing.
And I think it set like a low over the fandom
that goes along with that movie.
There's always gonna be "Chainsaw" fans no matter what.
But there was definitely that when you would talk about it
and you'd hear them talk on the panel
that there's that something missing.
And it was Gunnar Hansen.
Gunnar was always open to anything.
It didn't matter if it was three o'clock in the morning
or pouring rain.
He would look around and people would be drenched
and you'd see someone moping around, and he goes,
"Hey, we're making a movie.
We are lucky we're making a movie."
He brought that to the set.
I've been carrying that with me on every movie since.
Another time, I went out to eat with Gunnar
after we'd filmed the scene for my movie,
and I was with the actor and cinematographer.
Two college-age kids that were into film making
that I used on my movie.
We went out to eat with Gunnar and had a wonderful time.
We went to leave and Gunnar's car was in front of us.
We get in our car, we look up,
Gunnar has a hockey mask on in front of my car,
standing there threatening us.
Kinda like a mixture of Jason and Leatherface.
I just looked, and my friends were freaking out.
I started freaking out,
being a "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" fanboy,
but I didn't want to show it.
So I rolled down the window, I said,
"Hey, asshole, wrong mask."
The interesting thing is,
although this line was quite funny
when he wrote this on here, what does it mean now?
Gunnar's sick sense of humor.
Please, Lord, just let this be over.
So I'm glad you're doing this, Michael,
because I think it'll be a real tribute to him.