Gunnar Hansen

Saturday, September 27, 2003

It was a dark and stormy night….wait, strike that. It was a nice night in San Diego, the air was filled with screams and the smell of gasoline. Blood soaked ghouls lined the streets and smiling in the center of it all was Gunnar Hansen, the man with the gorgeous silver hair. In my usual, magical way, I managed to get him to do an interview with me, and after several sad moments of my fumbling with the tape recorder, this is what ensued:

Gunnar Hansen: Ok, now we're cookin'.

Indeed. Ok, blah blah, the Chainsaw remake blah blah?

GH: Umm..blah blah, not much hope. Well they told me when they called me to be in it that it was going to be a dark, psychological horror movie. Not a blood bath like the original. So I said, "Have you seen the original?" And she said, "Oh yeah." And I thought; no you haven't, or if you did you closed your eyes the whole time. The problem for me is, it sounds like if that's the official line for the movie, then they don't know what made the first one work.

So are you in the new one?

GH: No. They wanted me to do a cameo. So they wanted me to come for one day and pay me union minimum. So basically they figured they'd get me to endorse the film, they'd get my name on the poster, and I said no, I'm not doing that.

Why did you take the part of Leatherface, back in the day?

GH: I was working as a carpenter, and I heard these guys were makin' a movie and I thought it'd be an interesting summer job, something to put on my life list, you know, like people who watch birds. All that list of bizarre jobs you have during your life, so really, that's why I did it. I thought it'd be fun to do something that in the future I could tell my grandkids, "Your old grandpa was in a horror movie once." That's all I really expected. I didn't have any idea it would be what it became. And I wasn't trying to have a career as an actor. 'Cause I turned down a bunch of films after Chainsaw, including The Hills Have Eyes, and The Great Waldo Pepper. I got asked to be in a Robert Redford movie and I said no.

What did you do in the years between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, which you didn't do?

GH: I was working as a writer, which is really what I do. I wanted to be in Chainsaw 2 because I wanted to do it, but we just couldn't come to terms financially. I was disappointed, but I was making my living writing, so it didn't ruin anything.

Are you still on good terms with Tobe Hooper?

GH: Well, I guess. I keep in touch with everybody, all the actors; we're all pretty good friends. But Tobe, I don't think he has anything to say to me, I think he's kind of uncomfortable around me. I've got no problem with him, but I always get the feeling he's uncomfortable around me. We did the commentary track together [On the Texas Chainsaw Massacre DVD], but even then I noticed he seemed uncomfortable, so I tried to intimidate him a little bit. We got into the sound booth and he lit up a cigar and I just leaned over and said, "Give me one of those!" And he just went, "OK!" (Evil laughter)

When did you decide to embrace the fandom?

GH: For a long time I had no idea. I had moved to New England. I live in a small town on the coast of Maine, and I had no idea how big Chainsaw had become. I had turned down stuff, and I had no notion until I got a call from a guy who I'd met before who had always wanted to be a movie director, and he said, "I'm in Hollywood, I'm making movies." His name was Fred Olen Ray. So I went out and did Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers with him, and that's when I discovered how big Chainsaw was. The second day of shooting one of the actresses came up to me and said, "Hey, you're not an asshole at all. You're so famous, and your character was so scary, we all just assumed you were a jerk." And that's when I realized that nobody had spoken to me the entire first day of shooting because they were scared to death of me. And then after that, Fangoria got a hold of me and asked me to do a convention in New York, and then I did one in L.A. And that's when I discovered that there was a fan world, and that there were these conventions. I thought it was great. I had an entirely separate life from Chainsaw anyway so it was easy for me to get involved with this without feeling that this was my world; or feeling like I had to believe the bullshit. The bullshit being, people coming up to you and saying, "Oh man, you're the coolest guy in the world." After awhile when you go to these conventions, you start to realize how many of the actors believe it, how many of them think they are the coolest people in the world. But because it had been so long, and because what was important to me was different, it was easy to go to these shows and just have fun and enjoy them and not feel like it was real important.

Too bad you missed out on the chicks all of those years though.

GH: You know, I once wrote an article for Texas Monthly, and I talked in there about how one of my fantasies had always been that there was going to be a headline on a National Enquirer, "I want Gunnar's baby, young starlet sobs!"

Why do you think people are so into the character of Leatherface?

GH: I think it's because he's so scary. And I think the reason he's so scary is that he's almost human, but not quite. I've thought a lot about what is frightening, and I think that the closer something is to being human, the more frightening it is. This is why Frankenstein is a lot more frightening than Godzilla. 'Cause Godzilla is just a big lizard, so he's dangerous, but he's not unnerving. He's just this creature. I think a character like Leatherface, when you think about the movie, one of the reasons the movie is frightening is because people are saying to themselves, "There are people like this out there." But Leatherface is the most frightening character because he's not knowable, you don't know if he's really human. He's obviously human in some sense, but he's also, there's some elemental part of Leatherface that's hidden; and that's the mask. And that makes him a much more frightening and interesting character, and I think people love Leatherface because he's one of the only truly frightening characters in horror movies. And he's unknowable, so people are obsessed with him. Leatherface never takes his mask off, he changes masks depending on what's going on, so I asked myself the question, "What is beneath the mask?" I thought, I've got to know, what is Leatherface like under the mask, what's there. And I decided there's nothing there; that if you took the mask off there's no face at all, it was just blank. And that's how I thought of him, and that's how I played him, and I think that's part of why he's an unnerving character.

How does it feel when you actually get to meet someone who's never seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

GH: It's a relief. I actually met Frank Langella a couple of years ago. It's really funny, it's an acquaintance of mine who always has some movie star come visit her in the summer, and she takes him around and introduces him. And this woman I've known for years can't think of anything about me except that I was Leatherface, so whenever she introduces me to somebody, that's what she tells them. So she introduces me to Langella, and this was great, he had the perfect answer, and he looked at me and smiled and said, "Never heard of it."

Demon Lover. (I swear, that's all I said. I never really managed to ask a question here, but Gunnar's so awesome he went with it anyway).

GH: Demon Lover, Donald Jackson, one of the heavy hitters of Hollywood. Poor Don, you know Ted [Nugent] was at a low point in his career when Don was doing Demon Lover, it looked like Ted wasn't going to go anywhere, so he got Ted to agree to do the soundtrack. Nugent had agreed to the soundtrack and Don was all excited, and then he finished shooting the movie, and before he could get Nugent to start recording, his career took off again. So Nugent says, "Forget it, I'm not doing this movie." It broke Don's heart.

Do you ever shave your beard?

GH: Not since Chainsaw. I had to shave it for the movie because they didn't want the hair sticking out of the mask. And that's the last time I shaved it.

Tell me about Iceland.

GH: Well, it's a country of about 250,000 people, it's volcanic. I was born there and I go back just about every year for a visit. When I was a kid I'd go back for the summers, every second year, and stay with my father. My parents were divorced and my father stayed there. Then we came to the states, and now I just go when I can. I was there last summer for two weeks. It's a wonderful place.

Do you think you'll ever play Santa Claus?

GH: No, it's something I'll never do. And the reason is because my second grade teacher told me I had to be Santa Clause in the school pageant and I hated her ever since. In fact, when I found out at the age of 22, that she was long since dead, I actually applauded. When you're the fat kid in school, you don't like attention called to the fact. When you're seven years old, you're pretty self conscious, and then to have your teacher pick you 'cause you're the fattest kid in the class, you know.

And so the interview ends. To read about the Haunted Hotel and Frightmare on Market Street, where Gunnar was appearing, click here. I'd like to thank the staff of The Haunted Hotel, and Frightmare on Market Street, Lee Christian, Raymond Castile, Larra, and especially Gunnar Hansen and his mighty hands.

-Aine

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