11th: There's been a lot of talk since the massacre at Columbine about violence in film inspiring real-life bloodshed. Do you think this is true, or are the films themselves a reflection of our reality?

Hansen: The weekend after Chainsaw came out, someone tells me at a chamber concert, "16 people were killed this week in New York, and it's your fault." It's an amazing kind of notion to me. I was recently asked to give a talk at a law class, at a local college and I discovered it was kind of a trap. What they really wanted was to confront me with this question. My first reaction was that it's an uninteresting question, my second was that it was irrelevant. My answer is this: People go after horror films not because they're violent; they go after horror films because a lot of times horror films have values that contradict normal values. And that's why people are so outraged. When Raiders of the Lost Ark came out, it was much more explicit than Chainsaw Massacre. And no one raised a voice in complaint about the explicit violence in a film that, in some degree, was aimed at kids.

11th: Right.

Hansen: And when Chainsaw came out, Johnny Carson gets up on TV and says that he's offended that TCM didn't get an X rating for its violence. What's happening is that we're going after these films not because of their violence. We see the violence as something we can hang onto, when in fact, we're offended by horror movies because we're middle Americans who don't want to see things in which the values are not the same. The vision in horror films is often very dark. We want to have a movie that tells us everything's okay, and that's what Raiders tells us. I didn't want to stop watching that, I felt good when I finished watching it. But it seems to me that films, like you said, more than shaping the attitudes reflect the attitudes. A horror film does not pretend that death is not horrifying. It doesn't pretend that violence isn't bloody, grotesque and painful. But if you want to talk about irresponsible violence in the media, you're better off looking at television... do you remember The A-Team?

11th: Vaguely. It's a little before my time, but okay.

Hansen: The A-Team... no one ever died in The A-Team. The ultimate occurrence of this is when they were being chased in a helicopter by the bad guys and the helicopter crashed, burst into flame and the wreckage comes crashing onto the beach. And a man comes jumping out of the helicopter going, "Whoa, that was a close call." None of them are even singed. I remember thinking, if you want to complain, this is really an irresponsible expression of violence in the media. You have violence with no ramifications. People get upset with horror films because they show what violence is about.

11th: With Chainsaw, do you think the reason it provoked so much controversy is because it had two major taboos -- the oldest taboos, really -- of cannibalism, and of implied incest?

Hansen: Yes, and I think also in a way that's the brilliance of the chainsaw. It's not a delicate instrument. There's nothing subtle about the saw. In a way, if you're thinking of violent death, what more horrifying death than to be chopped up by a big saw like that?

11th: And eaten, afterwards.

Hansen: I think that's what people took offense at. And it's funny, because Chainsaw Massacre was not the name of the movie when we shot it. The name of the script was Leatherface, or we were going to go out on a limb and call it Headcheese. You don't really realize it, but they serve headcheese at the dinner table. And when the new title came out, I was aghast. I was like, "How can you do this?" It turned out the distributor came up with the name. And it's brilliant. That made the movie. If it had been called Leatherface, it would have been successful and had a cult following, but it would not have entered the culture.