KOORIS ON HOOPER: A RARE, WELL-ROUNDED POLYMATH OF THE CINEMATIC ARTS
Texas Cinematographer Richard Kooris on Tobe Hooper's well rounded, all encompassing education as a filmmaker.
Audio excerpt taken from the Shout Factory audio commentary track for that recent release in particular
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FILM CAREER OF WILLARD TOBE HOOPER
Education as a Filmmaker
It should be noted, almost entirely non-traditional, self taught aside from a period of less than 2 years at the University of Texas under Shields Mitchell in what was then the current evolution of the schools's much older broadcastind program, and not a real film school for another several years (Fall 1965, to specific), with no cameras or equipment or students except Hooper.
Despite some minor offhand claims that there was another student besides Hooper by Mr. Boom, better known as Joe Bob Briggs, no evidence verifying this other student in the proto-film school has surfaced thus far. I think the other person sometimes alluded to was just Mitchell himself...
Hooper enrolled Fall 1962, but would only be considered a student proper for a period of less than two years, when Shields Mitchell sudden quit his job and left Hooper to his own devices, to teach himself as he lingered around the campus area and developed a close friendship with head of the Public Broadcasting System and guy behind KLRN-TV, Austin's PBS station at the time, who happened to have the stations headquarters on the film school property, which he owned.
The Heisters (1965)
Tobe would not make it through 1964 for a variety of reasons besides Mitchell's abandonment. Firstly, he was on the precipice of being the person to release the very first Texas-made motion picture to get a national release (The Heisters, 1965) which saw the beginning of his working and relationship with the Perryman Brothere. In addition to all of this, by the end of the year he would be a father to one William Tony Hooper, his only child.
Post 1965, while making an experimental documentary about very old historical buildings getting demolished all over Austin and Dallas in particular, both himself and his right-hand creative partner, Ron Perryman were recruited by former KTBC-TV news cameramen Richard Kids and Gary Pickle, joining their new venture ad equal partners with them in the creation of a film production house in Austin, then called Motion Picture Productions. It would be better known for its later name, however: Filmhouse
Eggshells: An American Freak Illumination (1971)
After his most ambitious attempt since The Heisters in 1969 - 1970, Hooper attempted to make his first feature length feature called Eggshells: An American Freak Illumination, with writing help from a new acquaintance he met during filming, Kim D. Henkel. But it proved uncommercial and too much of a stereotypical movie about hippies and pot.
Because of this failure, Hooper was determined to really think outside of the box and create something both wholly original, yet marketable to audiences universally. This mission would result in a screenplay written by both Hooper and Henkel originally titled "Headcheese" in early 1973 but would soon be renamed, being known under the title "Leatherface" all throughout filming.
Hooper had made dozens of very intense original productions all throughout his childhood and teenage years up until his move back to Austin in the early 60s after living with his terminally ill dad for a few years in both Louisiana and Dallas before returning to Austin in 1961. He made his living as a working cinematographer for most of the 1960s and would work on his personal directing projects with Ron Perryman as his DP, on the side until Eggshells (but really, not until Chain Saw in '73).
Despite the core of Chain Saw's crew comprising of the early first few classes of film students to come out of UT's still relatively new Radio-Television-Film department, including TCM's cinematographer, Daniel Pearl (who was fresh off having just completed his Masters degree, mere weeks earlier), his best friend, Ted Nicoloau (who would do sound on the side in addition to directing, working alongside the slightly more experience Courtney Goodin usually (Goodin, with Richard Kooris, who was Daniel Pearl's teacher, along with the upperclassman Larry Carroll - Chain Saw's initial editor - were the founders of the Austin film production house "Shootout" which existed as a competitor to Filmhouse in Austin for a time.), these traditionally educated students of film, all of whom were in their early 20s still, were still very green compared to Hooper, having little to no real world experience to his decades of practice at that point, being 30 during the production of Chain Saw in 1973.
Directing Chain Saw: Production and Post-production (1973 - 1974)
Hooper's talents seemed to rely heavily on this inexplicable intuitive sense for filmmaking, with Tobe often directing in what was perceived to be a very unorthodox manner (or at worst, there would be those who wondered if he really knew what he was doing trying to direct a motion picture at all, such as Bill J. Parsley, the exectuive director of Chain Saw, who grew weary of Hooper's unorthodox style of direction and eccentric practices blocking and re-writing each day, along with the very worry-inducing tendency to improvise and just "play it by ear," much to Parsley's terror.
But the final product, which was largely edited by Hooper himself, along with the film's avant-garde atonal, dissonant score, composed and performed with Wayne Bell after principal photography using what can be considered prepared or "tack" instruments, and various other unusual instruments which comprised of children's instruments, broken double bass woodwind instruments, broken guitars, animal bone, rattles, among other sonic tools to create a method of scoring the picture that bears a resemblance to the experimental art music forms that 20th century composers were experimenting with following a trend that saw the abandonment of strict tonality and traditional harmonic structure in favor of atonality, serialism, early experiments by composers using electronic instruments, and various other modernist and postmodernist deconstructions for the first half of last century, most notably the movement known as "musique concrète" - an often self-aware system of musical composition that was more "sound collage" in the tradition of the abstract works by those such as abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock or experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhag, which came into being around mid-century, during the age of Stockhausen.
Wayne Bell often brings up this comparison (apparently hearing it by way of comments from viewers or critics who have examined the score and have enough of a musical framework of 20th century avant-garde western art music compositional styles to be aware of it) and seems to agree with that assessment to some degree.
Hooper's Career Following The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Wayne and Hooper would team up once again in 1976 to create the similarly avant-garden atonal analog synth score with dissonant, freakish oscillators and alien mood-scapes in Hooper's most misunderstood picture in his entire filmography: the very much underappreciated work that would be filmed following Chain Saw's success under the title of "Death Trap" but like Chain Saw before it, would be renamed upon its (very limited, and mostly completely unknown release, given the independent and low budget nature of the project). Despite bad criticisms by viewers who misunderstand the picture and write it off as some poor Chain Saw rehash (something it never attempts to do), it is one of his finest, most artistic, pieces of filmmaking by Hooper, where he is perhaps at his very most experimental.
Though its merits may be better understood now, it was seen as a failure and Hooper's career in Los Angeles was on shaky grounds for some time afterwards, being fired from several productions he was hired to direct not long afterwards (sometimes as late as 10 days into filming). Despite a three-picture deal with Universal Pictures for both himself and Henkel in 1976, nothing ever came to fruition from that and all of their follow up collaborations were failed treatments. The same would occur when the duo tried to pitch their sequel to their 1974 hit, allegedly titled "Beyond the Valley of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (a reference to Roger Ebert's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls). After pitching it around Hollywood for the rest of the decade with no takers, Henkel would eventually lose interest, perhaps because of a creative disillusionment, but I believe also something to the effect of homesickness, declining funds, and having obligations back home that required him supporting a family, resulting in him eventually moving back to Texas.
Hooper would try a second time after Henkel's departure, this time with John Milius during the early 80s, but the same result occurred. In later years, Hooper speculated that the original was just too shocking for audiences at that point, even years later by the end of the 1970s and no one wanted to touch it.
But before the new decade would set in, Hooper would eventually gain some sort of solid footing that guaranteed his filmmaking career in Hollywood, thanks to CBS Fox who hired him to direct the Salem's Lot telemovie, one of the greatest Stephen King adaptations. The television film, released in two parts, was a solid piece of melodrama that paid tribute to the essence of the novel, with Hooper somehow accomplishing an extremely rapid and difficult fast production schedule to get the adaptation released by 1979, all while being his first experience directing anything for television. Following Salem's Lot, a further anchor for his career as a director in LA came with 1980s The Funhouse, produced by Universal Pictures with a script written by a person who would become a very effective Hooper collaborator, Larry Block, who was present with Hooper all throughout filming in Miami, Florida, just as Henkel had done on Chainsaw seven years earlier.
Poltergeist and the later films of Tobe Hooper
Unfortunately the biggest film of his career after Chain Saw, and one of his best, Poltergeist would be tarnished by a stupid, untrue rumor alleging that Hooper did not actually direct the picture himself, but that it was actually directed by writer and producer Steven Spielberg. This is verifyably false and easily proven untrue with any real look into the evidence behind the matter, though it followed Hooper for the rest of his career - and saddest of all, unthinking individuals who don't actually care about discovering the truth of the matter still love to believe this rumor and readily spout it as fact, tarnishing Hooper's reputation with lies still, though now posthumously. It is 100% untrue, though. It's complete bullshit, actually. It hurt him severely, but still he continued to produce artistic genre creations with the same deeper subtext and guise of American satire to share very interesting and valid social commentary about America and its society/culture. Namely, the Golan/Globus trilogy of Lifeforce, Invaders From Mars, and TCM2, but also Spontaneous Combustion, the Mangler, Mortuary, and his final film, Djinn.
Djinn (2013) sought to explore the Islamic mystical folkloric traditions, though with a production timeline that imploded into complete chaos (as is nearly always the case with Hooper's productions) with filming in the UAE inhibited by threats against Hooper's life, allegedly by government officials who believed him to be something akin to a United States spy, sent by the CIA in order to overthrow the government of the Muslim nation (clearly, an allegation that has no basis in reality and is totally ridiculous - but funny and makes for a fascinating making-of tale, like many of his pictures). Sadly, it would be Hooper's last film, with the American director's unexpected death coming just four years later, shocking the world of film, both in the world of horror and outside of it.
***
