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Friday, February 18, 2022

Leatherface vs. Scarface – Adam Marcus Details the Wild Original Pitch for ‘Texas Chainsaw 3D’! [Exclusive]

In yesterday’s installment of Larval Ink, we learned the history behind the original draft of Texas Chainsaw 3D penned by Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan. In addition to detailing the project’s inception and the many differences between their draft and the finished film, Mr. Marcus and Ms. Sullivan also discussed a tantalizing original pitch that predated their original two-page document which led to their hiring. Please read on for the screenwriting duo’s initial bold idea for where Texas Chainsaw might have gone.

“The two page document was our second pitch,” Marcus explains. “Our first pitch opened the same way.” The same way being how the eventual movie began – just after the events of the 1974 original, local police and a lynch mob descend upon the Sawyer home and open fire on the deranged family (this would include the Sawyers we were introduced to in the original film, and a number of other extended family members who have arrived to help their kin). The Sawyer clan is slain, their home burned down, and their youngest is taken by a mob member and raised as their own. This child, Heather, grows up and becomes the tale’s heroine (as played by Alexandra Daddario in the 2013 film). “The whole massacre of the Sawyers, the baby is kidnapped, all of that was still the same.

“Twenty years later, Heather has a boyfriend at the Art Institute in Chicago who’s a rich kid whose parents have a summer place down in Mexico in Nuevo Laredo, and they’re all going to go for spring break down to Mexico because they’ve got this incredible pool, and they kind of all hang out poolside and blah, blah, blah. They’ve just had a horrible winter in Chicago, so they’re all really excited.”

Eventually, we find out that Heather’s boyfriend has been running drugs up from Texas, which is the real reason why he’s taking the trip. When the drug cartel in Nuevo Laredo discovers this, they kidnap the family, the kids, and Heather. As Marcus notes, a Texas Chainsaw franchise trope has it that members of the family work in law enforcement, so – “One of the Sawyers works in the police department, and this thing from the FBI comes over and he gets this image of this woman, and there is something about her. I don’t remember what our key was, but there was a physical clue that this was a Sawyer, that this young woman was the baby that was stolen.

“This cop goes back to the rest of the Sawyers and says, ‘One of ours has been taken.’ They load up the truck full of the remaining Sawyers, including Bubba, and they cross the border into Nuevo Laredo to go get their kid. It became Leatherface vs. Scarface.”

Imagine that. A Chainsaw film that positions the Sawyers as the de facto heroes, including Leatherface acting as an antihero of sorts, with a setting and horror/crime angle that diverges wildly from what we’ve seen from the series up until this point. “It was this totally insane film, mostly set in Mexico, with the Sawyers going up against the Mexican drug cartel to get back their kin.

“We were really proud of it. I’m telling you, we stood there, and when we said ‘Leatherface vs. Scarface’… truly, Deb and I were giddy, like two kids.” And the producer they were pitching to? “They were like, ‘What else you got?’”

How the hell did the producers not go for this first pitch?!?! “It was too high concept,” Marcus adds. “It was too high concept. They were like, ‘That’s clever. Meh. Can’t you just have some kids in a van, and they show up at Leatherface’s house?’”

Marcus sighs heavily. “’…okay.’ We [could have done] something totally new, but also something fun for the audience. But you know…”

Sadly, this iteration of Chainsaw didn’t come to pass. Nevertheless, one has to wonder if there’s a possible future out there where Leatherface does indeed come up against the Mexican cartel some day. We can only hope.

Very special thanks to Adam Marcus and Debra Sullivan for their time and insights.