As established a classic as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is, the sequel is considered a classic in its own right--largely due to a steel-potted loon named "Chop Top." So, sit back and listen as...
By Bill "Chop Top" Moseley Gather 'round, my children, and I'll tell you the story of Chop Top in the land of Chainsaws and Straight Razors. Not for the faint of heart? You bet your sweet little gizzards- and yum yum, they do taste good after roasting over a mesquite charcoal fire! Okay, I was Chop Top in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2--you all remember, the one with Dennis Hopper? The funny one? I was the guy with the plate in his head, the one who scratched it with a lighted coat hanger. You know, the hippie with a haircut? Purple tie-dyed long-sleeve shirt, bell bottom jeans, cool purple shades, gnarly dentures and a love of Iron Butterfly ("Music is my life!")? Whatever happened to me, anyway? Well, funny you should ask. I'm still alive, still "skitching and skeetching" here in Los Angeles, up the freeways in my new car, down the back alleys with a smile on my face, two kids in tow, both little girls, the "Chainsaw-ettes." My hair did grow back, thank you very much, and my teeth got whiter. I heeded the call and headed to LA about 12 years go, right after Saw 2.
I got me some headshots (no plate), an agent, started doing the Hollywood shuffle-fresh meat-landed parts in Pink Cadillac with Clint Eastwood (he cold-cocked me in my Big Scene), Disney's White Fang (first class henchman, spent three months in beautiful Alaska), hmmm, played Johnny in Tom Savini's remake of Night of the Living Dead ("They're coming to get you, Barbara. They're horny; they've been dead a long time"), Quinn, the evil synthoid, in Charles Band's Crash & Burn, Soldier #2 (or 3?) in Chuck Russell's remake of The Blob, New Captain of the Deadite Army in Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness, and Ricky the Santa Claus killer in Monte Hellman's Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, to name a few. Of all those fabulous jobs, darling, Saw 2 still has my heart, and flesh, and pass the napalm krinklies, wouldja? Okay, okay, I got the job of Chop Top because I sent Tobe Hooper a 5- minute video I wrote and produced called The Texas Chainsaw Manicure, set in Sonia's Hair Fashions on New York's Staten Island. I played a hitchhiker cameo, licked a hunk of real head cheese, had a wine mark on my cheek just like Ed Neal and talked all geeky and gravelly like him. I brought a copy of the tape with me to LA back in '84 when I was covering the making of 2010, the "space odyssey" sequel, for the late, great Omni Magazine. I was staying with my prep school buddy, Peter Seaman (real name, I kid you not), who was working as a screenwriter at some studio just down the hall from Tobe Hooper himself. Pete (who with his partner, Jeff Price, wrote Roger Rabbit, Doc Hollywood, and the upcoming Wild, Wild West, offered to trot my tape down the hall to Tobe. I said yeah, good idea! Tobe got the "Manicure," watched it, loved it, loved me as "hitchhiker," told me he'd keep me in mind if he ever did a "Chainsaw" sequel. He did, and he did. Two years went by before I got a call in New York from someone identifying themselves as Kit Carson, asked me where he should send the script to Saw 2. My response- Who is this really? But, I gave him my address, and a couple of days later, here was this script that was freaking lunatic and smart and deliciously violent and I had to be in it. I figured that maybe the "Saw" bunch might even fly me out to LA to audition. I don't audition very well, so I figured I wouldn't get the part, but I would get a free round-trip to La La Land. Then someone in Cannon Films legal dept. called me at home and asked if I had an agent or did I want to negotiate the contract? The what?! I told 'em I'd get back to them, called an agent I'd met months earlier at a Christmas party, and asked if she'd work out my deal. Of course she would--who can resist free money?- and I was bound for Austin, TX, for eight weeks at Screen Actors Guild-scale wages. She made it sound like SAG minimum was a defeat until she informed me that that meant about $1,800 a week! I laughed out loud--hell, I'd been making about $200 a week as a writer/ actor/house painter/general all-purpose cockroach in New York City, and $1800 base pay sounded pretty good to me!
Risa, my agent, did negotiate my "bald head payment." Special effects makeup artist Savini wanted me bald so the makeup would be easier to apply--so Risa held 'em up for $5000 to shave my head! I would have done it for free--that's why we dopes have agents! I am prattling on here, ain't I? What was the question? Oh, yes, what do I think about the differences between Saws 1 & 2? Chainsaw scared the living stuff out of me when I first saw it in Boston in 1975. Hell, I was a Yale grad, a horror film expert (I ran a film series at old Eli called "Things that Go Bump in the Night" with my partner, Gary Lucas,who went on to play guitar for Captain Beefheart and has his own group, Gods & Monsters, in NYC). In spite of my horror pedigree and enormous brain, despite seeing the movie in the afternoon on the tail end of a double bill with Enter the Dragon, Chainsaw seriously disturbed me! So much so, that over the next couple of years I saw it 13 times to get so familiar with it that it wouldn't scare me anymore! All that did was pound it deeper into my brain. My relief came when I was working on a cattle ranch in Wyoming side by side an undertaker's son from Geneseo, Illinois, who babbled as he chopped wood that fateful afternoon in 1984. He was gibbering, high on Mellow Yellow, bug juice, all manner of sugar treats, when I heard him say "Texas Chainsaw Manicure," and then babble on. Duly noted. I went back to the bunkhouse and jotted down the title and a little scenario about a woman who goes to get a manicure and ends up with one from Leatherface and his chainsaw. When I got back to New York, I gathered up a few friends, called in a few favors and the rest is history. I love Chop Top, and just two months ago, right before I went to Haiti on vacation, I donned that old plate and grabbed up Sparky and Scratcher and Chop Topped for Tony Hooper, Tobe's son, who's working on a home video called The All-American Massacre. Felt good to get back into Chop Top's skin, real good. I'd like to do it again, do it some more. The other players in Saw 2? Jim Seidow's down in Houston with his wife, Ruth. I guess Bill Johnson's still down in Austin tending bar. Caroline Williams is about to give birth to her second child; she and her hubby, Andy, have moved out to one of the nicer suburbs of Los Angeles. Me? Two kids, new '99 VW Golf (with "Chop Top" whale tail CA license plates). Just got a gig for the Late, Late Show writing jokes for Craig Kilborn--well, I write 'em at home, fax 'em into him, and if any get on the show, I get $75 a pop! Yep, I'm a yuppie yahoo dingbat, but scrape away this pinkish hide, and there's a gibbering maniac not too far down singing "E-X-I-T...Exit!" Thanks so much for "popping off" to us, Bill! Perhaps someday Tobe Hooper's son will star you in The Texas Chainsaw Manicure 2! In the meantime, good luck with the writing gig! Cheers! |
