The Spine Tingler

Movies imitate reality but aren't entirely real, although they aren't entirely false, either. Their "almost-reality" – manipulated by narrative and style into content and story – is both true to life and artificial, something we both are aware of but yet buy into (the willing suspension of disbelief). The genre of horror movies is even more uniquely layered in that the films can be the most overt, the most out there, of cinematic narrative fictions but their effectiveness is determined by how much genuine fear they invoke in the viewer. You can say that romances make us feel amorous, that adventures thrill us, and that comedies make us laugh, but those emotions are sympathetic and desirable. Stark, unrelenting fear? That's something else altogether.

The great horror filmmaker Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, released in 1974, is generally acknowledged as one of the most important and influential horror films, which is a way of thinking about it critically. In terms of a visceral response, it is an ever more intensely terrifying film that evokes fear from deep inside the viewer – though, interestingly, there is very little actual gore in the movie. The terror comes from the tension. The film offers layer upon layer of evil: At first gradually discomforting the audience, it soon accelerates into a fear of what might be coming next – as much as one wants to know what's coming next, because that's why one is there watching. Level upon level upon level, the normal is rent asunder by the repugnant unknown like a twisted maze in a fun house, like a suburban development built on an ancient grave site, like a modern nuclear family of cannibals.

After decades of directing films and episodic TV shows, Tobe Hooper has shifted to the novel. Co-authored with Alan Goldsher, Midnight Movie (Three Rivers Press) features blood, guts, sex, and zombies.

Hooper's protagonist is a filmmaker much like himself – in fact, they share the same name – who is notified by a film festival programmer that a print of his first film, Destiny Express, long thought lost, has been found. It is to be shown at the film festival, which is called South by Southwest. Only the film, when shown, ignites apocalyptic horror.

Level upon level: I work for a film festival called South by Southwest. A few years back, we found a print of Tobe Hooper's Eggshells, his first film (made half a decade before Chainsaw), which had long been thought lost and which we then showed at SXSW Film.

The three protagonists of the novel are a part-time Austin Chronicle film reviewer, Erick Laughlin; a University of Texas student and waitress, Janine Daltrey; and a film fanatic, Dude McGee. No similarities with the life I lead or with Hooper's life there. In the novel (not in reality) Hooper had a devastating car accident that wiped out his memory so he has only the vaguest hints about the film. Well, in real life Hooper did have a car accident, which wiped out his memory, but only of that day, not of years. Also diverging from reality: When we showed Eggshells at SXSW in 2009, people loved it. When they show the fictional Destiny Express at the fictional SXSW, something far more horrific and catastrophic happens.

Recently Hooper and I talked about Midnight Movie – that is, a real conversation, on the phone, not fiction in a book.

Austin Chronicle: How did the book come about?

Tobe Hooper: Well, the book came about beginning around three years ago. I was being interviewed by Alan Goldsher. Talking together, the idea of doing a book started happening between us because of the stories that I told about growing up in Texas and the rich characters there, especially those I knew from around the time of making [my first short film] "The Heisters" up to and through Eggshells. ...

Eggshells is nothing like Destiny Express, my lost movie in the novel – well, except it is weird and esoteric and all. It was that whole experience coming to Austin that inspired the novel.

These days my memory gets stuck in the middle of two things at one time, which is not too far off from the guy in the book. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a Mixmaster, the food blender, especially when working on a number of projects at the same time, as I have [been] for the past seven or eight months, and ... I've even forgotten what the question was, Louis.

AC: Did you have a car accident like in the book, and did it mess with your memory?

TH: I did. I had amnesia, and I can't remember the car accident happening. I remember something small, something white, something floating at me. It's the only memory I have, and it's not an image I could paint or draw or anything like that; it was more of an emotional memory. I don't remember getting out of bed that morning. I mean, it almost knocked my lights out; it was a really bad accident.

AC: How did you work with your co-writer?

TH: We talked for days, for weeks, for months. We also did a lot – a hell of a lot – of emailing. It was a very good get-together and melding of things about me and the creation of a character that is myself. It's part of the driving force in the book, having a character that is based on me. Actually, it's a character that is a perception of me more than me, but there's a lot of me in the character.

AC: Considering the rocky road of some of your projects, I'd imagine having the kind of control one has writing is a real plus.

TH: It is awesome. The imagination can run wild ... it's like making cinema in the mind. In writing, I think I've found something new to toy with, another art form that I can work in. When you are writing a novel, you don't have executives looking over your shoulder; you don't have money issues; you can make as big a budget movie [within the novel] as you want to. You don't have to worry about schedules and getting all the shots done that day, and you can make the actors just really shine. I found it is cinematic. I'm looking forward to the next one.

AC: Have you given any thought to filming the book?

TH: Yes. I mean, I've given thought to the casting. It would just have to be Daniel Day-Lewis playing me. [laughs]

AC: Are you going to write another one?

TH: Yes. I don't know when, but I certainly will, because it's was just so satisfying. I'm starting to work on it. I do have an idea – the germ of an idea.