Shock Value - Jason Zinoman [65]
Parsley had investments in oil, ranching, farming, and, increasingly, movies. He met Burns while she was working as a waitress and told her about funding two exploitation movies, including one about a black Hugh Hefner, and they struck up a friendship. Texas had long had its share of rich men chatting up young aspiring actresses. But in the early seventies, the allure of Hollywood glamour seemed less far away than it once was. The movie industry was becoming decentralized, and producers were looking for cheaper places to make films. Go-getters like George Romero were avoiding the studios altogether and making movies in their backyards.
Warren Skaaren, an aide to the governor of Texas, saw a potential new market after noticing that New Mexico had success luring Hollywood companies by assisting in finding locations, cheap places to stay, and permits. With the support of the governor, who owned a chain of theaters, he set out to bring business to the state by creating the Texas Film Commission. As the first head of the commission, Skaaren convinced Columbia Pictures to shoot their new movie Lovin’ Molly in Austin. The Sidney Lumet film about life in cattle country starred Anthony Perkins, Beau Bridges, Blythe Danner, and a handful of locals. This was the first exposure to a major movie shoot for several of the future actors of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, including Burns, who worked as a stand-in for Danner.
Getting a Hollywood director and movie stars down to Texas was a coup for Skaaren, but he wanted to build something homegrown. Ron Bozman, his old roommate at Rice University, introduced him to a young writer, Kim Henkel, who worked as a grip with Bozman on a biker movie shot in Houston called The Windsplitter. Hooper starred as the heavy. Henkel met Skaaren and handed him a script he wrote with Tobe Hooper called “Head Cheese,” and Skaaren called his friend Parsley and told him it was sure to make some money. Skaaren wasn’t thrilled about the title, but he thought it might have commercial potential. Parsley knew just the girl to star as Sally, the only survivor.
Parsley agreed to put down two-thirds of the original $60,000 budget, raised the rest, and through his corporation M.A.B.—Marilyn Burns’s initials—owned 50 percent of the movie. He also made Burns a partner in the company, giving her one-sixth of the ownership. He denied romantic involvement with her, but at the very least, the perception was widespread. Hooper and Henkel, both of whom were from Texas, owned half. The rest of the cast—local university students, veterans of a dinner theater called Theater Unlimited, and various unknowns working in the punishing heat of August—took home a few points of the profits in lieu of salary. They didn’t understand that their stake shrank again after Parsley found more financing, but it’s hard to imagine they would have protested. After all, this was a horror film made in a few weeks in a dusty corner of Texas. No one imagined this movie would make anyone rich. Most of the actors would be delighted if their friends merely saw it.
With its peculiar origin story shaped by strange bedfellows, Texas Chain Saw Massacre inspired various theories, rumors, and speculation around the Texas film world—all of which were vague, and many of which were shifting or contradictory. In what is nothing more than hearsay, Henkel claims to have heard that Parsley financed the movie because he feared that if he didn’t give Burns the role, she would expose him for mishandling state funds. Others had less conspiratorial notions. Ron Bozman, who worked as a production manager on the film, called Parsley a “major league hound,” adding that he never believed the rumors about financial shenanigans. Although he could point to no firsthand knowledge, Bozman said, “It