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With this installment of Larval Ink, we’ll be hacking into 2013’s much maligned horror requel pioneer Texas Chainsaw 3D, peeling back its skin and rummaging around its viscera to reveal the film’s bloody beginnings as a much different script from husband and wife screenwriting team Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan.
Ms. Sullivan and Mr. Marcus join Bloody Disgusting here to detail their original screenplay and its development, the most egregious changes to their story which still rankle with fans to this day, and their ultimate thoughts on the finished film.
“So Stephen Susco was the first writer on Texas Chainsaw,” Marcus begins. “He was hot off The Grudge, and [Lionsgate] wanted him to do a movie where there was no cannibalism. And we were told by the producer that was the thing that they were really not interested in … because of the massive disaster that was [the underperforming Clive Barker cannibal film] Midnight Meat Train. So they did not want any movies with flesh-eating in it. Well Stephen Susco, being a true fan of the genre, went ‘How the hell do you make a Texas Chainsaw movie that’s not about cannibals? Because that’s what they are! They eat their kills!’ That’s the whole point of the story, the barbecue.
“So we were told they said, ‘Yeah, but we don’t want that in this movie.’ So Stephen wrote a couple drafts that had cannibalism, because Stephen is a badass. So Lionsgate parted ways with him.”
Following Susco’s departure from the project, the film’s Producer (who shall remain nameless for the purposes of this article) was tasked with seeking out a replacement for the writer. “He was a producer who at this point had scored the rights to produce six new films in the Texas Chainsaw franchise,” Marcus reveals. “He loved our writing, we were geniuses, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He comes to us and says, ‘Look, Stephen Susco is out of the project, and I want you guys to come in. Here’s the thing – Lionsgate does not want to use Stephen’s words at all. They don’t even want you to look at the script. Come up with your own version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, come up with what you would do.’ We were like, ‘Great!’
“We thought that it should start where the first movie ended,” Sullivan notes.
“So they loved that,” Marcus says. “I said, ‘How cool would it be if you can actually take the footage from the end of the first movie, separate the layers, and create a 3D effect out of that first movie?’ They loved that.
“And Deb and I were like, ‘Well look, it only makes sense logically that Sally, when she escapes, the first place she would go is to the police. Then the police would go to the Sawyer house, and we need to see that scene and what would happen. That’s where the whole opening of the movie happened.
Leatherface (Dan Yeager) in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
“Once we went past that, we created kind of the concept around Texas Chainsaw. Part of that was that we showed why the Sawyers became diseased and became crazy, that it wasn’t just that they were born in the Deliverance mold. We also gave a reason why the Hartmans and the Sawyers were sort of the Hatfields and McCoys, and also why the Sawyers had all of this land. That they had a ton of money, but because they were so insane, the money didn’t mean anything to them. That’s not what their purpose was. So we created a backstory. We also had flashbacks to Leatherface as a child. We wanted to show the whole history of the Sawyers in the movie.
“We were really thrilled with it. So we wrote all of that.”
So far, so good with this project. Unfortunately, trouble reared its head early on for the writers. “Here’s the thing, we’d written a two page outline of what we wanted to do. Lionsgate, unbeknownst to them, got our two pages that we had written for the Producer, [who had] delivered them as though he had written these two pages, which he had not. Debra and I wrote them. Then Lionsgate sent that out to seventeen other writers, and asked for pitches. Now, Lionsgate had no idea, they thought the Producer had written this outline.
“So suddenly, Debra and I are told we have to pitch Lionsgate to get the job. We’re like, ‘Wait a minute, what now?!”
“’But this is our idea!’,” Sullivan recalls thinking.
Marcus laughs. “We have to pitch our story, and they don’t know that it’s our story. Nobody knows it’s our story, but it’s our story. So, we go in … the Producer was in the room with all the executives from Lionsgate. We had written a fifteen page treatment of this, because we’re like, ‘This is our story!’ But we never said that in the room, we just gave them the fifteen pages. We were good soldiers. Then we said, ‘Um, hey, we got a full pitch, but also we’ve written the first eleven pages of the script.’
“And they were like, ‘What?!’ ‘Well, we heard you guys need this immediately, so we wanted to show you we’re motivated, and we’re really excited about this movie. So we wrote that whole opening sequence where they lay siege to the Sawyers’ ranch.’ Well, Lionsgate is like, ‘Wow, this is awesome. Well done! Cool!’”
“’So much easier for us,’” Sullivan laughs.
So, wait. Was Lionsgate ever made aware that the two pages they were working from actually came from these two writers, and not their producer?! “Lionsgate was alerted to it when the Producer tried to get them to change the paperwork out so the document would have his name on it to make it appear as if it was his idea and writing,” Marcus reveals. “They suddenly realized, ‘Wait a minute, Deb and Adam wrote this.’ We weren’t going to say anything. Again, part of being a screenwriter in the studio system is, you work within the politics of what’s going on. And Deb and I are very political animals. We’re not gonna screw with anybody.”
A week after this meeting, Lionsgate hired the pair to write a film based upon their own treatment. “Lionsgate was an incredible partner for us,” Marcus notes. “The problems arose with the Producer.”
Sullivan agrees, pointing out the original budget they were given for the project. “It was supposed to be a $20 million film.”
“So we wrote a $20 million movie,” Marcus says. “By the way, when Leatherface is fighting for his life against two people at the end of the movie … we didn’t write that. We wrote a dozen people, the twelve remaining people who had burned the Sawyers alive, that had destroyed the Sawyers at the beginning of the movie. Twelve of those people remained. The rest of the forty people that were at that siege have all been murdered over the years by Leatherface, who’s been in hiding in this basement.
“The end of the movie was this amazing bloodbath between Leatherface and a dozen people who were ready to kill him. It was like this incredible battle royale. By the way, we never wrote the line, ‘Do your thing, cuz!’ And we never had a scene in the movie with a smartphone, because the movie takes place in 1993!!!”
“Our script did not resemble a lot of what showed up,” Sullivan adds. “We had characters that you loved and cared about, so that you were sad when they died. They weren’t cheating on their girlfriends, or fucking over their best friend, and they didn’t pick up a hitchhiker and then leave.”
Tania Raymonde and Trey Songz as Nikki and Ryan in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
“Oh, yeah,” Marcus laughs. “I mean, I’m sorry, what kind of brainiacs are these kids that bring a hitchhiker they’ve literally just picked up and leave him alone in this multimillion dollar mansion while they go into town to get barbecue supplies. That’s not in our script.”
In advance of completing this article, your writer managed to lay his hands on a copy of Leatherface 3D, a first draft under a different title dated 10/20/10 on its cover page. Marcus laughs at the mention of it. “Where did you happen to find that?” I respectfully point out that I can’t betray my source. “Ah, well, it’s been making the rounds for years, so…”
And what story would the original screenplay have told? Just exactly how much did it differ from the produced film? Surprisingly, the broadest strokes of the story are essentially the same as Texas Chainsaw 3D, but it’s in the details where the script betters its filmic counterpart in every way.
Opening during the events depicted in the original Texas Chain Saw’s nerve-shredding finale, Leatherface 3D begins with final girl SALLY HARDESTY escaping from the murderous Sawyer clan and making it to the nearest police station, stirring up the cops with her story of madness and mayhem (one wonders if this opening would have necessitated reshooting the original film’s ending with a recast Sally). In short order, the local police station gears up and heads out to the Sawyer home, with one DEPUTY HOOPER having tipped off a local who stirs up a lynch mob which descends upon the house of horrors just after the police arrive.
In the Sawyer home’s basement, LEATHERFACE prepares to dispatch the poor Black Maria truck driver who dared to stop and aid Sally during her flight to freedom, all as the extended Sawyer family prepares for battle upstairs. While the mild-mannered SHERIFF BURNS tries to keep the situation under control, Deputy Hooper agitates the mob, leading to one member launching a homemade molotov cocktail into the Sawyer home, setting it ablaze and kicking off a massive gunfight between the two clans.
One Sawyer woman, LORETTA, ably defends her family in the midst of all the flying bullets, all while carrying her child in her arms. “There’s a moment where, when they’re laying siege to the Sawyer house, one of the women is holding a baby that ends up being [HEATHER, the film’s lead, as played by Alexandra Daddario in the 2013 film],” Marcus notes. “So you see the baby nursing on the mother while all the bullets are flying. And as you come up across the woman’s chest, up to her face, out to her arm – you realize that her arm is outstretched and she’s firing a gun out the window, and she shoots someone in the head while her baby is nursing on her. That image was the reason Deb and I were hired. That image is a microcosm of the movie we wrote. We wrote a movie that was about family, but this profane, insane version of the bonds of family.”
The mob is eventually victorious, killing most of the Sawyer family and burning the house to the ground. In the distance, the flames can been seen by a woman in her mid-50s, watching the Sawyer home burn from the safety of her mansion. Her husband moves behind her, assures her that their lawyers will make certain this event won’t “splash back on them.” She continues watching, enraged, and quietly apologizes: “I’m so sorry, children.”
Back at the burnt husk of the Sawyer home, a young man aiding the mob finds Loretta, who offers up her child to him with her last breath. He and his wife spirit the child away from the site, all as the mob poses for a photograph taken for the local newspaper. The group of vigilantes smile for the camera as the flash takes us to the opening title.
Alexandra Daddario as Heather in Texas Chainsaw 3D (2013)
Cut to nineteen years later. Chicago, 1993. Young artist HEATHER WHITE and her charming, “hero if there ever was one” veterinarian boyfriend DAN HENKLE discuss an upcoming trip to New Orleans when their friends descend upon them: Heather’s best friend CAMERON (“party girl who makes it her responsibility that her best friend has a good time”) and her boyfriend JERRY (“way too many piercings and tats, but he’s actually a sweetheart … the definition of a book you can’t judge by its cover”). Cameron passes along a piece of mail to Heather, which bears the news that her grandmother has recently passed away in Texas and has left her estate to Heather. A major surprise, given that both of her grandmothers are already dead.
A visit to her parents reveals that Heather was adopted, a secret her parents had kept from her. Though they assure her that her biological parents were “a sweet couple, just kids,” her mother and father make her promise that she won’t go to Texas and will leave dealing with her grandmother’s estate to them. She does so, reluctantly, but eventually decides to trust her instincts and seek out the answers as to where she comes from. Once her mind is made up, she and her friends (along with Dan’s sports enthusiast best friend DARYL) pack up and head to Texas in Dan’s vintage 1974 VW bus (“painted with a giant portrait of Vincent Van Gogh … the words ‘The Van Go’ are along the side”).
The group is a likable bunch, their banter and personalities revealing them to be a realistic bunch of kids who genuinely care about one another. “With Texas Chainsaw 3D, Deb and I were trying to create a van full of kids that you fell in love with,” Marcus notes. “That you were like, ‘I love these people. They’re interesting. They’re complicated. They are nice people who love each other.’ That way, when each one of them gets murdered, you’re upset. They’re gone, and you’re frightened because, ‘I don’t want that person to die!’ So that’s kind of the difference, I think, between what we write and what a lot of other sequels end up looking like.”
Our heroes eventually find their way into Kilgore, Texas, where they stop at a convenience store and immediately run into the local law enforcement in the form of DEPUTY CARL, a hard-charging lawman keen to bust the kids for anything at all. He’s talked down by Kilgore Mayor BURT HARTMAN (50s, “a bear of a man with impeccable clothes and a country mile-wide smile”). He welcomes the crew to his little town, even inviting them to the local carnival due to take place that evening, but then seems taken aback when he discovers that they’re there to settle up the estate of Heather’s grandmother.
The gang arrives at the Carson mansion
After a brief meeting with lawyer FARNSWORTH (60s), who explains that Heather is now a wealthy young woman (but that she is contractually forbidden to sell the property once it’s accepted and signed for), Heather and Co. look about the massive mansion that’s been left for her. Unlike its unkempt exterior, the mansion proves to be beautiful on the inside. Heather explores the property, and eventually discovers photos of her ancestors – including her grandmother, VERA SAWYER-CARSON, pictured wearing a crescent moon charm that looks not unlike the crescent scar on Heather’s chest. In looking around, Heather also finds a framed newspaper photo, its glass broken, featuring the band of vigilantes posing outside of the burned Sawyer home. Big X’s have been scratched over some of their faces. The group splits up, milling about, running across a high tech butcher room in the mansion’s basement (complete with its own charnel pit), as well as a small cemetery on the grounds boasting a number of Sawyer graves, with many of their headstones bearing the same date of death.
Before long, terror strikes. Leatherface quietly slips through a hidden panel in an upstairs room to kill Daryl with a butcher’s hammer, then drags him out of sight. He then reappears in the dining room, where Heather has discovered Vera’s corpse sitting at the dining room table in her Sunday best. Jerry comes running at Heather’s scream, only to have his hand cut through by the cleaver Leatherface swings at him. Heather backs into Vera’s corpse, knocking it over – an accident which infuriates Leatherface. From this point on, the next forty or so pages move at a breakneck pace, becoming one long chase sequence that passes through a number of impressive set pieces.
Heather and Jerry make a run for it, but are corralled downstairs and into the basement by Leatherface. They hide in his butcher’s room, and are eventually forced to dive into the charnel pit, swimming through a stew of viscera and chopped up parts both bovine and human. As Dan and Cameron cluelessly search the grounds for their friends, Heather and Jerry fight for their lives, pushing through the bloody muck until they find an exit – a ladder that leads up to a grate, a grate that leads up into a smokehouse. As they rise up into the room, “A HOOK TEARS INTO THE SOFT SIDE OF JERRY’S CHEEK”. Leatherface brutally tears out Jerry’s jaw and neck and throws them at Heather.
It’s at around this point in the finished film that one of its more notorious lines is intoned by Nikki, Chainsaw 3D’s version of Cameron. “Did we have a character from Chicago come to Texas and tell another character, ‘Welcome to Texas, motherfucker?’ No, we didn’t write that,” Marcus chuckles. “That’s not in our script. We would never have a person from Chicago act as some sort of ambassador to Texas there. No, we didn’t write that shit. We wrote something that at least made logical sense in the universe of a Texas Chainsaw movie.”
Heather bursts outside, racing through the tall weeds until she runs into Dan and Cameron, with the reunited trio escaping in Dan’s van. As they’re making their getaway, Leatherface rushes out in front of them, causing the group to crash. What follows is an impressive cat-and-mouse sequence, with our heroes trapped in the overturned van, trying to find an exit, all as Leatherface circles the vehicle and waits to strike.
“In the movie, when the van rolls over, Trey Songz [Dan equivalent Ryan in the finished film] cuts his own throat on broken glass from the window. We didn’t write that. We wrote that that character is now in a van that’s on its side. He’s leaning against the roof of the van, which has now become a wall. His girlfriend, Alexandra Daddario, reaches out to him when she hears the saw outside the van. They don’t know where the sound is coming from. Suddenly the saw comes through the roof of the van, through her boyfriend’s chest, [and is] right in her face. He reflexively grabs the saw with his hands and his fingers launch off into her face in 3D.
“That’s the stuff we wrote. We wrote like the goriest, craziest movie. It was a total 3D ride. We took the 3D thing really seriously. Like, ‘Let’s give people a horror movie they’ve never gotten in 3D, where literally the guts are hitting them right in the face.’”
Heather and Cameron escape into the woods, where Heather heroically leads Leatherface away from her hiding friend and into…the town carnival. Unlike the finished film, the script’s take on the carnival sequence is massive. “Leatherface murders over a dozen people at the carnival. It’s a bloodbath,” Marcus laughs. “The carnival was one of the bloodiest sequences in the movie.”
Heather escapes into a House of Horrors and finds herself surrounded by various masked maniacs wielding (fake) weapons. Leatherface follows after her, not immediately standing out in this environment until he comes face to face with another masked performer – this one wearing a pig mask and brandishing a far less impressive toy chainsaw. Leatherface cocks his head to the side, trying to understand the sight in front of him, and then swings his saw down onto the performer, splitting him in two.
Heather races outside, Leatherface hot on her heels, and makes it to the carnival’s ferris wheel. In a panic, she pushes past the operator and grabs hold of an ascending seat which pulls her into the air. Leatherface takes out the ride operator with his saw, spraying bystanders with blood. He destroys the controls, but breaks his saw in the process. Heather slowly makes her way back down toward the awaiting Leatherface. He grabs hold of Heather, pulling at her jeans, tipping out an innocent woman who falls into the ferris wheel’s gears which grind her to bloody pulp.
Just as Leatherface is about to set upon Heather, a gunshot rings out – Mayor Hartman, hunting rifle in hand, prepares to fire again just as an aged Hooper, now the town Sheriff, arrives. Leatherface disappears as the lawman takes in the carnage around him (“What the hell’s goin’ on here?!”).
Heather and Cameron are taken to the police station, where Heather discovers that Hooper led the lynch mob that killed the Sawyers, and that the people in her grandmother’s framed photograph, faces X’d out, are various members of the vigilante crew who have gone missing in the area. Hooper, urged on by Hartman, reveals to Heather that the chainsaw-swinging madman who killed her friends is Jeb Sawyer, her cousin. Hartman notes that Jeb wasn’t always the way he is now, which sends us back to a brief black-and-white flashback which shows a five-year-old Jeb being mercilessly bullied by a group of boys which included Hooper. In the course of their conversation, Heather also discovers that her adoptive parents were also a part of the vigilante group that burned down the Sawyer home.
Outside, lit by the moon, Leatherface “moves through the sleepy town like a shark.” He spies a 28” chainsaw in the window of a large hardware store right across the street from the police station. With some effort, he pulls free a newspaper vending machine from its moorings and hurls it through the store’s window.
Four deputies, realizing what this must mean, grab their riot gear and shotguns and head into the dark store. What follows is another game of cat-and-mouse, with the officers meeting horrific ends at the hands of Leatherface (an industrial drill, a hunting knife, a paint can bludgeoning, and – of course – that massive chainsaw all figure into the deaths). “These four cops are torn to pieces in the hardware store,” Marcus points out. “It was this terrifying sequence in the dark. These four cops, fully armed, and Leatherface dispatches them like he’s Leon, the Professional. I mean, it was an insane sequence.”
Texas Chainsaw 3D’s infamous FaceTime sequence
It was this setpiece that was regrettably replaced by the FaceTime sequence in the finished film. Marcus sighs. “Had we been there on set for Texas Chainsaw, one of us would have turned to somebody and said, ‘Hey, guys? It’s 1993. The smartphone doesn’t get invented for fourteen more years. So are we going to replace Alexandra? Or are we making this in 1993? Which one?’ We would have said it. And, of course, we would have been escorted off set.”
Leatherface find his way into the station, murdering a deputy and driving his new chainsaw between Hooper’s eyes. Deputy Carl eventually arrives and saves Heather and Cameron, driving them away from the station and toward Hartman’s slaughterhouse, assuring them that state police will meet them there. Unfortunately for our heroes, Carl is delivering the two to the remaining vigilantes – including Hartman, who is revealed to have been the architect behind the lynch mob (and young Jeb Sawyer’s primary bully as a child). Hartman hates the Sawyers, always has, and sees the two young women as a way to lure Leatherface to his death before he’ll kill them as well to do away with any witnesses. Marcus notes, “It was a movie that really turned Leatherface into Frankenstein’s Monster. Here was this young kid, horribly bullied by Burt Hartman as a teenager. So we set up a rivalry so that the villain of this movie would be so hateful by the end of the film that you are cheering for his demise. So when Leatherface finally kills these guys, he becomes an antihero. Leatherface just isn’t this simple, mindless monster. He’s a thinking being. So you had a little bit of sympathy for Leatherface through the movie.”
Leatherface does indeed show up, now wearing Hooper’s face, moving through a stampede a cattle to make his way toward his victims-to-be. “Heather is hiding amongst the cattle, and Leatherface is tearing through this stampede of cattle with the chainsaw rolling,” Marcus says. “Like, that’s your poster guys. Your poster is a full stampede, with Leatherface walking through with the chainsaw. There’s nothing cooler than that.”
Leatherface and Heather come faces to face in Texas Chainsaw 3D’s final act
Leatherface murders his way through the vigilantes. Hartman callously tosses Cameron into a hoof-and-parts grinder, then faces off with Leatherface. The two do battle, with Hartman wielding a cut-off saw, a “massive saw that looks like a TABLE SAW BLADE in a chainsaw casing.” They slash at each other, with Leatherface falling into a waste disposal with several grinding blades whirring at its bottom. Just as things look bleakest for Jeb as he barely hangs onto the sides of the disposal funnel, he swings his saw at Hartman, lopping off one hand, then another. Hartman topples over into the funnel, ending their long rivalry. And sorry gang, but there’s no “Do yer thing, cuz!” to be found in this climax.
Heather, on the run from Deputy Carl, uses an industrial wrench to knock the crooked lawman down before Leatherface appears and advances on her. Just as he’s about to strike a killing blow, he sees Heather’s crescent scar (with a brief flashback revealing that Loretta’s necklace, flaming hot from the Sawyer home burning down around her, scarred the baby she held in her arms). Deputy Carl picks up his revolver and takes aim at Heather. Leatherface sees this, and steps between the two, taking the bullet for his newly-revealed cousin. Heather moves around the fallen Leatherface, using her wrench to beat Carl to death – “HEATHER PARTS HIS SKULL WITH HER WRENCH! AGAIN AND AGAIN UNTIL HE IS NOTHING BUT A SPLIT MELON OF BRAIN PULP THAT SPATTERS HEATHER.”
After, the two go back to the Carson mansion, with Heather patching up Leatherface (“She’s pulled the thorn from the lion’s paw”). Leatherface removes the crescent charm necklace from Vera’s corpse, then puts it on Heather, passing the matriarchy of their family to her. He then trails off to his basement. Heather, still quite dazed, finds a letter that Farnsworth had left to her from her grandmother, which details Jeb’s nature and that she must now care for him. “You are the only one that can hold closed the gates, lest he be set free on the world,” the letter warns.
Just then, Heather’s adoptive parents arrive at the mansion’s front door in search of Heather, the two final vigilantes ringing its doorbell. Heather spins in terror as Leatherface slams open his basement’s sliding metal doors.
“And you can not let that happen,” the letter finishes. “Ever.”
For its many broad structural similarities, the difference between the Marcus/Sullivan script and the finished film is night and day. Whereas Texas Chainsaw 3D is a weak slasher with a fatal flaw (that timeline…ugh), mostly unlikeable cardboard cutouts and some howlingly bad lines, the Leatherface 3D draft boasts a sympathetic cast of characters, vicious murder scenes and sharp dialogue. The script manages to have a good heart and a bad attitude all at once, and had it been faithfully adapted, the resulting film might very well have been the ultimate splatterpunk movie. Damn shame.
So what exactly happened here? How did this script lead to such a different finished product? Marcus explains: “Our manager explained to us that ultimately, Lionsgate had a real impasse with the Producer. They said, ‘We’re not going to finance the movie. You go out and find financing, and we’ll distribute.’ Great. They’re going to distribute the film. Fantastic. Again, until now Lionsgate has been nothing but the best partner for Deb and I. We were loving working with them.
“The Producer, however, is taking us to lunch and crying about changes that the studio wants to make to the script. And we’re like, ‘Well, you know, they’re the studio. They’re paying for the movie. They’re gonna want to make changes.’ He’s telling us, ‘Don’t listen to Lionsgate. I want you to write what I want you to write, I don’t care what they want.’
“And we’re like, ‘We want you to make a movie, bro. Like, let’s make a movie. Lionsgate is paying for it. You kind of want to give them what they want.’”
Unfortunately, the Producer couldn’t find the $20 million needed to properly make the film. “He found $8 million,” Marcus reveals. “And, he had told us that Lionsgate had fired Deb and I. This was, by the way, an absolute lie. He told us the reason that we got fired was because we did what the studio asked us to do, that we listened to them. And I’m like, ‘How is that? How do you get fired for that, bro? Like…we did what?’
“Yeah, he was pulling a lot of shady shit,” Sullivan adds. “He was doing real harm to us, to the movie. It was very ugly.”
To add insult to injury, the producer in question then went behind the writers’ backs to cobble together various drafts that they’d written for the project. “He took our drafts and he Frankensteined them, which is against the WGA, and he gave the director a Frankensteinian version of our script. The director [Takers helmer John Luessonhop] signed on, and then the Producer went to our manager, Steve Gates at Evolution, and asked if we would come back for rewrites.
“Now remember, this is the guy who just said we got fired by the studio. It’s all bullshit! None of that happened! So the Producer called Steve Gates and begged to have Deb and I come back. Now, what he wants us to do is rewrite the script for free, but in our contract, our financial bonus for writing the film is tied to the amount of money they make the movie for. Not how much the movie makes, but how much they make the movie for. So he’s asking us to come and do a free rewrite of the movie … but the free rewrite is going to cut our bonus in more than half.
“Our manager was like, ‘Screw this guy, no way.’ We said, ‘Look, we’ll do it. We’ll come in. We’ll do the writing for free. But we want guaranteed box office bumps in our contract. That way, if the movie makes a lot of money, we’ll get the bonus that we’re writing out of the script by cutting it down.’
So our manager delivers our offer and the message that was conveyed back to us from the Producer was, ‘Why don’t you tell them to go fuck themselves?’”
Sullivan sighs. “Which is so stupid. Because if the movie makes a lot of money, it’s not like it’s going to cost him any more for us to get our bonus.”
“It was literally saying the audience will pay for the script,” Marcus says. “So John Luessonhop ends up directing the movie. He brings on Kristin Elms, they do a rewrite on the project. They go off and shoot the movie. Deb and I are sitting at home writing other projects. Which, by the way, here’s the crazy thing – our original script for Texas Chainsaw got Deb and I a ton of work. People read our script and were like, ‘This is an amazing movie.’”
Aside from its warm reception from those who read their initial script, Marcus and Sullivan received a thumbs up from the genre titan who started the whole thing in the first place. Marcus explains: “Tobe Hooper called Deb and I at home to tell us that we had written the first true sequel to his original film. He loved the script. I literally turned to Deb and said, ‘You can put me in a box now. There’s no greater validation than that.’”
No matter how beloved the original script was, the resulting film was widely derided, with various aspects ridiculed by genre fans and mainstream moviegoers alike (to say nothing of the critics – the film currently sits at a 19% on Rotten Tomatoes). Regardless of the film’s reception, Marcus and Sullivan hope that fans will one day get to experience a version of their initial take. “Our production company Skeleton Crew has a thing called Development Hell, where we do public readings [of unproduced screenplays],” Marcus says. “One of these days, we’ll do a reading of our version of Texas Chainsaw, and people will then get to make up their mind about our version versus what came out.” The couple note that the reading will almost certainly be recorded and put up for all fans to view, as well.
Still, it’s a shame that fans couldn’t see the movie as it was originally written. “The movie we wrote was really operatic and crazy and bloody,” Marcus says. “You can’t imagine the amount of blood in this movie. We wrote a movie for the fanbase. It was really written because we’re fans. The problem is, a lot of times the things that we love the most are put in the hands of people who don’t give a shit about horror. Or worse, people were in it for a money grab, and they think of the audience as a bunch of teenage idiots. They want to slum, and that breaks my heart. The people who really love horror movies, you can always tell when they’ve made a movie versus the people who are pretending. We wrote a movie for the horror fans. We really did. We wrote a movie that had sharp teeth…”
“And it was like they made a movie that somebody had to gum,” Sullivan finishes. “We were steak, they were oatmeal.”
In wrapping up our conversation, the screenwriters offer their final thoughts on Texas Chainsaw 3D and the film that might have been. “Loved working with Lionsgate,” Sullivan says. “Really loved writing the movie. I’m a little disappointed with what it ended up being. And, you know, there’s nothing you can do about that in particular, other than collect the residuals every time a check comes in. It hurts a little less,” she laughs.
Marcus agrees. “You know, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was so much fun to write. We loved doing it, loved actually writing that movie. And while I think they made a really fun, truly entertaining slasher movie … I know what could have been. And as a fan, I wish I could sit and watch that movie.”
Very special thanks to Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan for their time and insights.
This has been Larval Ink, a recurring feature which will take a look at the earliest iterations of certain genre films as they existed in their early scripting stage, long before the transformation which significantly changed the original vision into its final form for the silver screen. With these articles, we will be chatting with the writers of these initial eggs to gain their unique insights into their screenplays and the finished films they would eventually metamorphose into, and all the painful phases in between.
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In the final moments of I Blame Society, Gillian Wallace Horvat goes absolutely apeshift on a couple of film bros. “I am a strong female lead,” she grunts as she wields a blade across the throat of Producer #2. Blood spurts and covers the walls. The screen is coated in thick red plasma, leaving the film title seeping through. That solitary line punctures the graphic violence with sardonic humor, circling back to an earlier conversation when the same film bros eviscerated Gillian’s latest script for not having a compelling enough protagonist. The venomous refrain encompasses not only the entire thesis of the found-footage film but what it’s like to be anyone but a cis white man in the world.
“I am a strong female lead” could also read as the thematic premise to Tragedy Girls 一 a flashy, meta-slasher led by Sadie (Brianna Hildebrand) and McKayla (Alexandra Shipp), two high-schoolers desperately wanting to make a name for themselves within the serial killer arena. I Blame Society is a Making a Murderer demonstration, confined to one artist’s morally-questionable conceits in capturing authentic art; whereas, Tragedy Girls explores a very different hunt for authenticity, a comment on fame and online popularity through a murderous lens. Both films reside within the same blood-soaked realm; three women rising triumphant after clawing their way through the thorny thicket of the patriarchy.
Horvat originally conceived a documentary based upon a compliment she received from friends. “You’d make a great murderer,” they told her. She then set to work compiling interviews with friends, family, and exes 一 but the idea never felt truly complete. She shelved the project, only to return a few years later when producers Mette-Marie Kongsved and Laura Tunstall watched the short film and suggested fleshing it out in a found-footage format. It was like a lightning bolt of creativity, and it was off to the races from there. The set-up in I Blame Society is much the same: Horvat, who plays an exaggerated version of herself, swinging from deadpan to unhinged, plots a mockumentary (titled i, Murderer) around the murderer compliment. She chronicles her every move, from the hilarious introduction in which she proposes killing her friend Chase’s abusive, emotionally-manipulative girlfriend, to how she would theoretically commit the crime.
Three years later, the friendship has understandably fallen apart, and Gillian is going through a period of creative stagnation and toys with graduate work in law. She’s written several other scripts, including one about Israel, but everyone in her life, including her manager (who drops her), finds the lead character uninspired and uninteresting. Back to the drawing board, she decides on resurrecting the murderer mockumentary and forging ahead with her career. “I can’t sit back and wait for permission from some guy to make a movie,” she tells her camera assistant Olivia.
Through i, Murderer , Gillian traces out the “whole arc of a murderer’s career” and the “progression of thrills.” Things begin with something simple, and she shoplifts a bottle of cough syrup from a local pharmacy. Later that night, she works on a collection of knots she may use for the film process and shares with her boyfriend further ideas she has. Exhausted from the day, he complains about working with a progressive woman director and makes a misogynistic joke about Gillian’s filmmaking ambitions. “Are you making a porn now? Is that all you know how to do?” he jests, shrugging it off. The comment grossly underestimates Gillian’s power, and she takes it as fuel for her art.
Gillian plunges into the underbrush of her plan. She scouts out potential locations and targets, first spying a woman with a dog (that’s a no-go from the start) and then someone she surmises as an actress. Bingo! The woman leaves in a rush, and Gillian takes the opportunity to scope out the apartment, pointing out the advantages of carpet over hardwood, and begins proofing the space for her eventual breaking and entering. Amidst her preparations, she gets a call from her former manager’s assistant about a promising high-profile meeting with two producers (the aforementioned film bros). “We need an ally on your side!” Producer #1 and Producer #2 stress, spouting some nonsense about intersectionality within the company. Of course, it’s all performative jargon to seem inclusive; they don’t even give Gillian the floor to discuss her own work. They’d rather give her a menial task in creating a lookbook for another man’s greenlit project. Typical.
It’s a mere bump in the road for her, though. Misogynists will be misogynists. She plows further into the mockumentary. The second step is invading the woman’s apartment while she is present. In the witching hour, Gillian creeps into the window and sets up a series of hidden cameras throughout each room. She goes above and beyond in the scheme, even making herself at home and grabbing a slice of apple and a glass of wine. “I’m living my best life,” she whispers to the camera, as she sits bedside her prey. A creative by nature, she goes all-in on method. It’s both chilling and hilarious.
Gillian’s devolution doesn’t hit into overdrive until reconnecting with Chase, who breaks the silence after three years. They meet up for a hike to chit chat and get a little exercise in. Chase talks about everything, from how he’s doing these days to upcoming nuptials. This sets Gillian off into an epically-deranged monologue about him marrying “the fucking devil.” Chase is bewildered, hurt, and angry at her allegations 一 but has little time to challenge her before he succumbs to a deadly sesame seed allergy. Having no knowledge of this, Gillian claims that she assumed he just didn’t like sesame seeds on his bagel and merely wiped them off. Gasping for air, Chase lies writhing in the sun and squeaks out that he has an EpiPen in his bag. Gillian scavenges for it, but before she stabs him with the medicine, she pleads with him to make her a promise that he won’t marry The Devil. Life fades from his face, and he lies motionless.
It’s just the trigger Gillian needed to send her careening down a path of utter destruction. She kills a myriad of people 一 a calculated decision so as not to alert authorities with a discernible pattern 一 including the actress, a homeless man, and an egomaniac working as an insurance agent. Each slaying tantalizes her and gives her the most intoxicating high. And she’s not even close to being done. “You can’t anticipate me. You can’t predict me,” she stares down the viewer. The stunningly creepy monologue arrives during one of her midnight murders, interspersed with comments on how the police have no idea who could be behind such a sweeping epidemic. Naturally, they peg the killer as a man; how could a woman possibly commit such atrocities anyway? Gillian’s icy smirk says it all.
In a similar vein to Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, I Blame Society fully displays the messiness of becoming a murderer. She’s not a natural born killer, but it’s evident through a series of trial and error exploits that her bloodlust lurks in the deep recesses of her soul.
Tragedy Girls ’ Sadie and McKayla, on the other hand, are explicitly driven by some murderous impulse. Paired with their sick hunger to be famous, it creates the perfect storm in transforming them into this generation’s next big psychopaths. “Sometimes, I think nothing I do matters,” expresses Sadie over lunch one afternoon. Her rare confession exposes the insecurities she masks with eye shadow and an imposing presence, matched only with McKayla’s equally-fierce character. Both exude confidence, and as they discover through their murder campaign, no one ever takes women seriously.
The film opens with Sadie swapping spit with a boy named Greg. From the vintage automobile and the moody atmosphere, it’s a scene straight out of any ‘80s slasher flick. But there’s a flip. Sadie is on a mission to lure Lowell Orson Lehmann (Kevin Durand), a real life serial killer after whom they’ve modeled their own ambitions. Like clockwork, Lowell shows up and slaughters Greg in the most grotesque way, giving Sadie and McKayla a window to pounce and take him hostage. “Make no mistake who’s in charge, bitch!” spits McKayla, once they have Lowell bound inside an isolated shed. They profess their admiration for his work and rising body count (five so far) but are quickly disappointed when they have to finish off Sadie’s little boy toy themselves. “You couldn’t even do that right,” chides McKayla.
Sadie and McKayla then map out their entire process, from stalking potential victims to keeping a keen eye on the media. In one of the film’s funniest bits, the duo note the distinction between serial killers and spree killers in a claymation featurette for their YouTube channel. With the help of Jack Quaid’s ever-adorable Jordan Welch, they upload frequent detailed reports as a way to appear with their finger on the pulse, aside from chasing down a higher follower count, of course. It’s all about the theatrics for them, each public display a chance to hurl their stardom further into the sun.
While their morals are skewed, their relationship and love for one another is not, a key element director Tyler MacIntyre wrote into the script. Their commitment to each other and the cause pours forth through murderous binges, as they perfect the crime scenes and the methodical skillset it takes to exact such a plot. With the media naming the killer a male (because duh!) and ruling various deaths as accidents or suicides, McKayla and Sadie are forced to get creative and escalate things. When they off the know-it-all cheerleading captain, it looks like a freak accident, so they chop up her body into gooey parts to make sure there’s no possible way it could be ruled anything but murder. McKayla’s ex-boyfriend Toby (Josh Hutcherson), gym trainer Al (Craig Robinson), and eventually Jordan fall by the wayside.
Despite a temporary detour in their relationship, Sadie and McKayla could never stay permanently estranged. Even the allure of fame as a solo Tragedy Girl doesn’t satisfy Sadie for long. She cares too much and too deeply for her lifelong BFF. In the grand finale, they undergo the ultimate test and conquer Lowell once and for all, thus usurping his throne as the perfect boss bitch villains. They lock hands and slide their neon-colored masks down over their faces. Iconic. Together, they’ve mastered the art of serial killing, and their friendship simply grows more powerful because of it. Borrowing a sentiment from Thelma & Louise, they pack up their entire lives in a convertible and ride off in the sunset.
Tragedy Girls and I Blame Society sees women taking charge 一 of their careers, self-worth, bodily autonomy, and ability to take up space in the world. Where one is a highly-polished meta-slasher bonanza, the other carries a grittier, more disheveled tone in found-footage style. They are two sides to the same feminist coin (and we love to see it). On their own, each film has claimed an indelible place in the modern pantheon of woman-led horror, and jointly, it’s a volatile and electrifying double feature. Spin-off sequel with Sadie, McKayla, and Gillian when?
Double Trouble is a recurring column that pairs up two horror films, past or present, based on theme, style, or story.
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