What was your first experience with the films of director Tobe Hooper?
I first encountered Hooper’s work when I saw The Texas Chain Saw Massacre at the tender age of 15. It was on an unlikely triple-bill with Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon and Michael Findlay’s absurdly violent Shriek of the Mutilated. Hooper’s film made sleep difficult for the next three weeks. Few films before or since have affected me so deeply.
From that point on, I obsessively followed his career, from 1976’s Eaten Alive, his scrappy follow-up to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, to his justly celebrated 1979 TV movie Salem’s Lot (based on the novel by Stephen King) to his 1981 tribute to slasher movies The Funhouse to 1982’s spook-fest Poltergeist (which would have cemented Hooper’s reputation as a cinematic genius, but for the scandalous rumors regarding his authorship of the film).
I understand that you had a personal relationship with the director. How did that come about?
I first met Tobe on the set of his 1985 film Invaders from Mars. My good friend, the late, great Eric Lasher, was engaged as still photographer on the movie and quickly developed a friendship with the director. As a result of this connection, I was asked if I would like to be an extra on the film, and I spent several days as one of hundreds of Marines storming the sand pit.
A few years later, I was hired as a journalist and videographer on both Hooper’s 1989 film Spontaneous Combustion and his 1990 TV movie I’m Dangerous Tonight. Over the course of the next several years, I was fortunate to work with him on several more projects, including as a model maker on 1995’s The Mangler (in collaboration with Hooper’s son William) and as a videographer on his pilot episode of UPN television series Nowhere Man (also 1995). We became quite friendly, and it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that I had become a family friend, a relationship that lasted until his death in 2017.
Why Lifeforce?
I was lucky enough to be invited to a preview screening of the film’s original release cut that took place at the Alfred Hitchcock Theater on the 20th Century Fox lot, with Hooper in attendance. Even in its shortened form, it captured my imagination in a way that no other film had. When, years later, the extended “director’s cut” was released on video, it was a revelation.
As time went on, and I continued to watch both versions of the film religiously, it supplanted The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as my favorite of his films. It’s grand, operatic spectacle, its sardonic tone and sex-positive attitude spoke to me in a way no popular entertainment had before.
Having already written two books chronicling my experiences working with the filmmaker, and since no one else had written a book on the subject, I was irresistibly inspired to sit down and commit my thoughts to paper. Some three years later, here we are.
What are you working on now?
I’m currently the creative director of The Physical Media Advocate, a magazine devoted to collectors of physical media (VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and vinyl). I’ve also recently completed a feature article on the making of Nowhere Man for publication in the ‘zine, and I’m considering embarking on another book project dedicated to the history and fate of Hooper’s Invaders from Mars, another film lodged close to my heart.