“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Prequel” set visit: Q&A with R. Lee Ermey
R. Lee Ermey returns as Sheriff Hoyt, a character introduced into the Texas Chainsaw Massacre mythology in the 2003 remake.
Horror.com’s Staci Layne Wilson was among a group of select genre journalists invited to the hot, buggy, and oh so bloody set in Austin, Texas in November 2005. Here is the bulk of the interview, with spoilers cut out (we’ll run those parts of the interview, uncensored, after the film’s release which is currently set for October 6, 2006).
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Q: So this is basically your movie.
R Lee Ermey: Well, it’s about how this began. Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the remake, was such a succes and Sheriff Hoyt was such a warm, cuddly, lovable character that we felt that we needed to come back with another one and show how all this started out. It’s good to come back here. I always love to come to Austin.
Q: You came to this with your own ideas, so what discussions did you have with the director about what you wanted to see from Hoyt?
R Lee Ermey: Well, I was able to… Basically, that’s the way I did the first one because the Sheriff didn’t have much written for him in the first one. I’m never satisfied, I’m never happy, until we can make the character colorful, flamboyant and memorable. I love doing the character because he’s a sexually perverted homicidal maniac and there is no over the top. How can you possibly go over the top if you have that kind of character to play? Playing the good guy is tough because you know as well as I do, in real life, you have to watch your P’s and Q’s and conduct yourself in a respectable manner if you expect to have friends. With a sexually perverted homicidal maniac, you don’t have to do that. (Laughs) You don’t have to impress anyone.
Sheriff Hoyt is a fun character, really a fun character to play, and I have creative license, so that makes it even that much better, because there’s not a writer in the world, I’ve found, that can capture this character. I created this character in the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I like to think that he’s my guy. I can certainly show the evolution of how this all came about and the evolution of Sheriff Hoyt.
Q: So how do you handle it when a director says, ‘No, this is the Holy Grail, read what’s here?’
R Lee Ermey: Then I become his goddamn puppet and I let him slip his hand into my back and manipulate me and I do that scene as written and hate every goddamn minute of it.
Q: Before you say yes to a movie do you prefer knowing that you’ll have a director who is open to this?
R Lee Ermey: Yes. Yes. And I’ve gotten to the point where, if I don’t have artistic liberties in that type, of that nature, where I can evolve a character into what I feel he should be, instead of just being a puppet, I just basically tell them, ‘No thank you, I don’t care to be your puppet.’
Q: The two main characters, the male leads, one is going to Vietnam and one has been. Is there a relation to how your character acts to what they’re supposed to be doing?
R Lee Ermey: Well, okay, we have a marine. They’re heading for the recruiting station so that the younger brother can sign up. The older brother’s talked to younger brother into signing up, into going up to Austin and going to the recruiting office and signing up, so they can both be in the marine corp. My character basically, they came into his county. They made a big mistake, they came into his county. And I have a dialogue in this show where I’m talking about Korea, 1952, yours truly was a prisoner of war. Back in those days, there weren’t no rules, and when you were captured, you had two choices, you could either die or you could survive. We had to eat. Rations were thin back in those days, scarce back in those days. So about once a week, someone was chosen and then the next dialogue is, the kid, Dean, says, ‘Chosen?’ And I grab him and go ballistic on him and just, ‘I just told you, we had to fucking eat goddamnit and you’re not fucking paying attention!’ I’ve got him by the hair and I’m just yelling at him.
I control myself and I just say, ‘What greater sacrific for your country.’ And I tell him, ‘Now you have a choice. Do you want to be the motherfucker who eats or the poor, sorry motherfucker who gets eaten? What stands between you and getting eaten, basically, is you and twenty push-ups.’ So, I didn’t like the scene originally because it was too parallel to Full Metal Jacket. I don’t like capitalizing on that, it’s already, we’ve done that already. But once we rewrote and we sat down and everybody had their little thoughts about it, you know what, I think it’s gonna be one of the best scenes in the show. One more statement. I haven’t walked away from one scene since I’ve been here for three and a half weeks that I didn’t feel totally and absolutely pleased and proud of and happy with. Yet.
Q: You walk a fine line between being a tension breaker and comic relief. Where do you draw the line before the director says go up, go down, stay where you are?
R Lee Ermey: I start really at the very top, as forceful, as mean, as nasty and evil as I possibly can be. Because, like I said, I’m a, Hoyt it a horrible bastard. He’s a homicidal maniac, perverted homicidal maniac. How can you be over the top with this character? He gets by with murder, right? And even every damn thing I do anyway, I push right to the edge. Everything I do, every show, every performance, every TV episodic.
My objective as the actor is to push my character right up to the edge without going so far that I actually fall off and go over, go overboard. And then the director can adjust me down. Whatever level he wants to take it down to. I can give it to him different, in different stages. I can bring it down to whatever level he feels that it needs to be at, you know? And, that’s the way I operate and I’ve always done that. I’ve done it ever since the very first show that I ever did. So, you know, Full Metal Jacket was show number five. And, Kubrick liked it, so you know, that’s the way I’ve just always done it.
Q: Earlier today, we were talking about some of your great performances and thinking of some of the ones where you weren’t as keyed up. We came up with Dead Man Walking. What choices did you make on that one.
R Lee Ermey: A character like that, you can push him to over the top too as well, so I push him as far as I can and keep, and stop just short of going into the unrealistic, you know, and then the director will bring me down and – like the scene with Susan Sarandon in my house, in my kitchen, and she brings a pie. And I really, the first time I did that I was a lot harscer than is in the movie. Tim said, asked me to bring it down, I adjusted it a little ways, he said a little bit more, so I brought it down a little bit more where I was more civilized with her. And, to the point where Tim said, ‘That’s what I want,’ and that’s where we took him.
I don’t give a damn what character it is, there’s a point where you can push the character right up to the edge, without letting him fall off the other side and be unrealistic or unbelievable. You can push that, every damn character I’ve ever played, Jimmy Lee Farnsworth would be one in Fletch Lives. Saving Silverman, I played the Coach, you know. Boy I pushed that Son of a Bitch as far as I could push him. And then the director would pull me back down. And sometimes he would pull me down, and sometimes [he’d say that’s what he wanted].
Q: And that’s not puppeteering?
R Lee Ermey: No, what I figure is puppeteering is somebody that just totally directs your action, directs your words. I mean, there are directors that are so fucking insecure that they won’t let you move or change one word, even though the word means exactly the same thing, but that’s the word that maybe you feel your character would use, like a 50 cent word when you figure your character’s not real smart. And they won’t let you, I’ve worked with people that won’t let you change one single word in the script. But, when they won’t let you change a word and, at the same time, they want to totally drive, lead your character into a personality that you don’t agree with, that’s the puppeteer.
But there are directors, there’s writers, there’s producers, that are so totally married to their script, that you can’t change a word. And I think that takes away the actor’s creativity. I tell them, go find somebody else that will be happy doing this. There’s somebody that’s going to be happy doing this role.
Our hope is to make this better than the remake. I just told you, I’m happy with every scene that I’ve walked away [from]. I’ve been totally pleased.
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