“I wanted to make a skyrocket big enough that I could shoot the damn thing in the air and they could see me in Los Angeles. So that’s what I did.”
Austin-based filmmaker Tobe Hooper on making The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
Tobe Hooper made documentaries and commercials in Texas before making a hippy/psychedelic feature film called Eggshells in 1969. When only a few people outside of students at the University of Texas in Austin saw the movie, Hooper put aside his European art house film sensitivities and made this to turn heads—
It worked. He went on to direct Lifeforce in 1985 (which is said to be a favorite of Quentin Tarantino) and Poltergeist (which was produced by Steven Spielberg). The line from Poltergeist “They’re here” was a “Show me the money”-type line that became was often quoted throughout the 80s.
P.S. Eggshells has been called “the first feature shot in Austin” and I don’t know if that’s true, but Hooper has to be considered a founding member of what’s turned Austin into one of the great film communities in the world.
H/T Brad Apling for sending me some Tobe Hooper links that give me a track to run on.