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Even for an actor renowned for histrionic performances that make Al Pacino look subtle, Bill Moseley outdoes himself in The Devil's Rejects, the sequel to House of 1000 Corpses by rocker-cum-director Rob Zombie. The movie opens one week from today--July 22, 2005--a date destined to live in extreme cult-movie infamy.
Moseley's success is no minor achievement coming from the man who made his name as Chop Top, the lunatic ex-vet with a metal plate in his head from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. But there is so much more to Moseley than the psychos he plays onscreen. He's a musician, a former journalist, and the loving father of two daughters. But he knows what side of his bread to get bloody and re-visits the Chop Top character at horror conventions and online at www.ChopTopsBBQ.com.
On a recent press junket for The Devil's Rejects, in which Moseley plays the cannibalistic Otis, he sat down with Mr. Skin to talk about the movie, as well as his love of exploitation honeys, why Forbidden Planet gives him a comet in his pants, and the until now unknown link between his character Otis and the family-friendly film Milo and Otis.
Your character of Otis in The Devil's Rejects looks suspiciously like Rob Zombie. Are you supposed to be his cinematic stand-in?
That may be true; you'd have to ask Rob that question. I didn't see it as Rob or Charlie Manson, Jesus, Greg Allman. There are a lot of similar looks. Leon Russell. You know what I did, I read the script probably twenty or thirty times--that's how I work--and just let it sink in and respond accordingly.
Otis, in House of 1000 Corpses, was an albino. Kind of a partial albino because my eyes were red with brown flecks, I had albino skin and pretty white hair. Then for The Devil's Rejects, it was funny. I was over at Rob's house for the Super Bowl, I guess two years ago, and I already found out that we were doing a sequel and I was going to come back and play Otis again. He said, "I'd like you to grow a beard for Devil's Rejects." And I was like, man, I've never grown a beard and I don't think I have one in me. I said, "Can you show me what you have in mind for the look of Otis?"
He just took a paper plate, we were having some Cheetos or something, and he flipped over a paper plate and sketched a picture of Otis. It kind of looked like Greg Allman or Duane Allman. He said, "That's what I want." I said, "Jeez, I hope I got a beard in me." It took about four months to grow. It was a good beard it turned out, except for all that white hair [laughs]. They shaved my head and put a wig on me. It's not my hair.
Otis is not only sadistic but somewhat of a ladies man, if those ladies are naked and dead.
They all start off alive.
How much were you able to draw from your own personality to create the character?
I didn't have to add too much of my own experience because I don't have that much experience with dead women. What I do is try to let the reality of the screenplay, the story, impact me and just get out of the way. I got the experience as the experience came along in the story. I'm not a method actor. That's why I'm not in prison [laughs].
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 brought you to the attention of filmgoers with your masterful portrayal of Chop Top. How'd you land that plum role?
I had been very frightened by the original Chainsaw Massacre. That family was foreign to me and so frightening, that in order to get over what became a terror of rural America, and of course I'm from rural America so it was not a useful fear, what I did was I ended up seeing the movie probably a dozen times to get so familiar with it that'd I'd say, "Oh, yeah, here comes this part, here's the generator and here's the this and here's the that." But instead of making it less scary, it pounded that fear deeper into my head.
I ended up making a short film called The Texas Chainsaw Manicure, which is set in a beauty parlor, and I played a cameo of the Hitchhiker character which had been masterfully portrayed by Ed Neal, and got a copy through a friend of mine who happened to be a Hollywood writer with an office down the hall from Tobe [Hopper, director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre] back in 1984, I guess this was. I was working for Omni magazine at the time covering the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey sequel. I went over to see my buddy who lived in Hollywood, I was in New York at the time, and brought a copy of The Texas Chainsaw Manicure. He liked it and said, "Do you want me to walk it in to Tobe?" I said, "Why not?"
Tobe saw it, which is amazing, and liked it. I called Tobe about a week or ten days later and said, "Hi, this is Bill Moseley, I'm the guy who did The Texas Chainsaw Manicure." He said, "Jeez, Bill, who's the guy who plays the Hitchhiker?" I said, "Well, that was me." I figured he'd say you were way off. He said, "If I ever do a sequel I'll keep you in mind." On the basis of that I got a call two years later saying where do we send the contract.
Are there any plans with Tobe Hopper to resurrect Chop Top?
Nothing formal, although next year is the twentieth anniversary, I think Sony just bought MGM so they would have the rights to putting out a twentieth-anniversary DVD. I think there's a lot of great footage available. I'd be more than happy to participate in the commentary or do whatever it would take to promote that movie. But I haven't heard anything. I keep hearing there's going to be prequel to the new version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
There was a Chainsaw 3 and a Chainsaw 4 and no one was interested in Chop Top. I remember that the rallying cry of both 3 and 4 was, "Let's get back to the real horror of the original!" So a lot of people tended to look at number 2 as an aberration. It's funny; it was the same director and pretty much the same writer. To me, it was a legitimate sequel to TCM, and number 3 and 4 don't seem to have made the same impression. Chainsaw 2 has stayed the test of time. When you go back and look at it it's still a really fun movie.
You do perform as Chop Top in the heavy-metal band Cornbugs with guitarist Buckethead.
Yeah, keeping him alive that way. And also going to horror conventions, and probably one hundred times a day people ask me to say, "Lick my plate, you dog dick!" I love Chop Top, so I'm always willing to do whatever it takes to keep him alive and well.
You've had quite the career scaring the crap out of people in The Blob remake, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, and Army of Darkness, among others. What were the horror movies that you saw growing up that damaged your young mind?
I didn't see Chainsaw Massacre, it came out in like '75; I wasn't in diapers then, even though it may look like it. For me, it was Creature from the Black Lagoon, Day the World Ended, The Crawling Eye, old Universal horror movies. But I love exploitation fare. The things that would show up on Shock Theater, I grew up outside of Chicago, all black and white, sneaking into the library after I had been put to bed and watching Creature from Blood Island, just some scary weird old stuff. That was so exciting. I have fond memories of that.
Since this is an interview for Mr. Skin, do you recall the first time you saw a sex scene in a mainstream movie?
I didn't see the movie, because I was too young to get into the theater, but I remember at the Catlow Theater in Barrington, Illinois, there was a movie that was for adults only that was called The Bramble Bush. I remember the poster. There was a woman maybe in a bra and panties, which was very risqu?or that time. I don't even know, it was late '50s, early '60s. I didn't even see the movie, but there was something salacious about it, something forbidden, something very adult, and that was very titillating to me.
The first sex scene I ever saw in a movie, I have actually no recollection. I want to have a recollection because I've certainly seen a lot of them. Yes! I do remember the first naked woman I saw in a movie. It was Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet. She's Dr. Morbius's daughter. When she is swimming naked, innocent, and the animals are around the pond (Picture: 1), and I think Leslie Nielsen is her love interest, he's the captain of the flying saucer. She says, "Hey, come on in." He turns a corner and she's naked! I guess she was wearing a flesh-tone body stocking or something, but I remember that was very exciting.
Who are other sexy screen sirens that flip your lid?
There's a girl, an actress, from a bunch of exploitation films named Athena Massey (Picture: 1), who is very exciting. She's my idea of a sexy siren. She's brunette, very pretty, stacked, and she's a killer.
I read that you used to work for National Lampoon. Did you write any of those sexy fumettis, you know photo funnies, that used to run in the magazine?
I did! The first time I was in the Lampoon was for a photo funny. I had a costume of giant lobster parts that I had fashioned working at a fish market on Martha's Vineyard. I had a friend who was friends with Tony Hendra, who was one of the editors back then. I showed him my lobster costume, giant claws and a giant lobster hat, nosepiece, lobster knuckles as a belt buckle. Then I had some smaller lobster heads as shoes. I'd wear that bare-chested with some swimming trunks.
[Hendra] wrote a scenario of me as a waiter in a restaurant, taking an order, and people going, "Waiter, I'd like a lobster." And I'd go, "That's not a good idea." And they'd say, "Well, what about a person?" I'd say, "Excellent choice." Something dumb like that. But that got me in there. I was a contributing editor for something like ten years. I did a lot in the "True" section. I would go to the photo libraries of AP and come up with ideas like bullfighters getting tossed in the air by bulls. I'd find different pictures and they'd print a page of seven or eight images. One called "Our Ladies of the Laboratory," which was a bunch of nuns doing scientific things.
You were in HBO's Carniv?, but now that it's not returning, what's next?
There's a movie I did in Alabama called Home Sick and that's coming out through Synapse Films, I believe. I have a feeling it's going to be DVD, but you never know. It's the first movie by a director named Adam Wingard. It's kind of a Gummo slasher movie, and I play a demented inspirational speaker named Mr. Suitcase. That was a thrill.
Finally, as the father of two daughters, has your appreciation of violent horror movies waned at all? I mean, as a father, when I'm watching some guy get eviscerated, I'm thinking, "His poor mother!"
Obviously, I wouldn't bring my six year old to see The Devil's Rejects. But it's funny because my job as an actor is to go to places that people are unwilling or unable to get to, and to try my hardest to get there and make it look real. My other eighteen-year-old daughter is out of the nest and free to do whatever she wants to do.
Early on, with my oldest daughter, I used to watch all the Disney movies. Back in the days of VHS tapes. When she was six or seven, whenever she got into videos, she'd like to see Milo and Otis like ten times. I didn't like putting my kids in front of the TV and leaving them. They're going to be in front of the TV, I'm going to be there with them, and we're going to watch together. I finally said, "I can't watch Milo and Otis one more time, so let's try to find something that we both like." Which is pretty easy because I'm kind of a kid at heart.
I started showing her Godzilla movies. She really got into them. I said, "That's not real, so you don't have to take it to your dreams." But she loves Minya [son of Godzilla]. It did me proud at the age of nine or ten when she'd be able to recite all of Godzilla's adversaries. I'd say, "Who's the crab monster?" "Hera!" "What's the name of the spider?" "Spiga!" I was proud of her. I'd show her off, but nobody appreciated it as much as I did.
This is fun stuff. It's not supposed to scar you for life. I remember seeing House of 1000 Corpses and families would bring their small children to see it. It's disturbing because a lot of times they would get very frightened and their parents would laugh at them. That wasn't good. I've done some horror conventions where parents would come up and proudly push forth a five year old that could recite lines from House of 1000 Corpses, and that's kind of cool in a way, but it's also a little bit frightening. "Hey, Johnny loves Otis!"
Stay away from little Johnny.
Yeah, Johnny's got a bumpy road ahead.
Moseley's success is no minor achievement coming from the man who made his name as Chop Top, the lunatic ex-vet with a metal plate in his head from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. But there is so much more to Moseley than the psychos he plays onscreen. He's a musician, a former journalist, and the loving father of two daughters. But he knows what side of his bread to get bloody and re-visits the Chop Top character at horror conventions and online at www.ChopTopsBBQ.com.
On a recent press junket for The Devil's Rejects, in which Moseley plays the cannibalistic Otis, he sat down with Mr. Skin to talk about the movie, as well as his love of exploitation honeys, why Forbidden Planet gives him a comet in his pants, and the until now unknown link between his character Otis and the family-friendly film Milo and Otis.
Your character of Otis in The Devil's Rejects looks suspiciously like Rob Zombie. Are you supposed to be his cinematic stand-in?
That may be true; you'd have to ask Rob that question. I didn't see it as Rob or Charlie Manson, Jesus, Greg Allman. There are a lot of similar looks. Leon Russell. You know what I did, I read the script probably twenty or thirty times--that's how I work--and just let it sink in and respond accordingly.
Otis, in House of 1000 Corpses, was an albino. Kind of a partial albino because my eyes were red with brown flecks, I had albino skin and pretty white hair. Then for The Devil's Rejects, it was funny. I was over at Rob's house for the Super Bowl, I guess two years ago, and I already found out that we were doing a sequel and I was going to come back and play Otis again. He said, "I'd like you to grow a beard for Devil's Rejects." And I was like, man, I've never grown a beard and I don't think I have one in me. I said, "Can you show me what you have in mind for the look of Otis?"
He just took a paper plate, we were having some Cheetos or something, and he flipped over a paper plate and sketched a picture of Otis. It kind of looked like Greg Allman or Duane Allman. He said, "That's what I want." I said, "Jeez, I hope I got a beard in me." It took about four months to grow. It was a good beard it turned out, except for all that white hair [laughs]. They shaved my head and put a wig on me. It's not my hair.
Otis is not only sadistic but somewhat of a ladies man, if those ladies are naked and dead.
They all start off alive.
How much were you able to draw from your own personality to create the character?
I didn't have to add too much of my own experience because I don't have that much experience with dead women. What I do is try to let the reality of the screenplay, the story, impact me and just get out of the way. I got the experience as the experience came along in the story. I'm not a method actor. That's why I'm not in prison [laughs].
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 brought you to the attention of filmgoers with your masterful portrayal of Chop Top. How'd you land that plum role?
I had been very frightened by the original Chainsaw Massacre. That family was foreign to me and so frightening, that in order to get over what became a terror of rural America, and of course I'm from rural America so it was not a useful fear, what I did was I ended up seeing the movie probably a dozen times to get so familiar with it that'd I'd say, "Oh, yeah, here comes this part, here's the generator and here's the this and here's the that." But instead of making it less scary, it pounded that fear deeper into my head.
I ended up making a short film called The Texas Chainsaw Manicure, which is set in a beauty parlor, and I played a cameo of the Hitchhiker character which had been masterfully portrayed by Ed Neal, and got a copy through a friend of mine who happened to be a Hollywood writer with an office down the hall from Tobe [Hopper, director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre] back in 1984, I guess this was. I was working for Omni magazine at the time covering the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey sequel. I went over to see my buddy who lived in Hollywood, I was in New York at the time, and brought a copy of The Texas Chainsaw Manicure. He liked it and said, "Do you want me to walk it in to Tobe?" I said, "Why not?"
Tobe saw it, which is amazing, and liked it. I called Tobe about a week or ten days later and said, "Hi, this is Bill Moseley, I'm the guy who did The Texas Chainsaw Manicure." He said, "Jeez, Bill, who's the guy who plays the Hitchhiker?" I said, "Well, that was me." I figured he'd say you were way off. He said, "If I ever do a sequel I'll keep you in mind." On the basis of that I got a call two years later saying where do we send the contract.
Are there any plans with Tobe Hopper to resurrect Chop Top?
Nothing formal, although next year is the twentieth anniversary, I think Sony just bought MGM so they would have the rights to putting out a twentieth-anniversary DVD. I think there's a lot of great footage available. I'd be more than happy to participate in the commentary or do whatever it would take to promote that movie. But I haven't heard anything. I keep hearing there's going to be prequel to the new version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
There was a Chainsaw 3 and a Chainsaw 4 and no one was interested in Chop Top. I remember that the rallying cry of both 3 and 4 was, "Let's get back to the real horror of the original!" So a lot of people tended to look at number 2 as an aberration. It's funny; it was the same director and pretty much the same writer. To me, it was a legitimate sequel to TCM, and number 3 and 4 don't seem to have made the same impression. Chainsaw 2 has stayed the test of time. When you go back and look at it it's still a really fun movie.
You do perform as Chop Top in the heavy-metal band Cornbugs with guitarist Buckethead.
Yeah, keeping him alive that way. And also going to horror conventions, and probably one hundred times a day people ask me to say, "Lick my plate, you dog dick!" I love Chop Top, so I'm always willing to do whatever it takes to keep him alive and well.
You've had quite the career scaring the crap out of people in The Blob remake, Silent Night, Deadly Night 3, and Army of Darkness, among others. What were the horror movies that you saw growing up that damaged your young mind?
I didn't see Chainsaw Massacre, it came out in like '75; I wasn't in diapers then, even though it may look like it. For me, it was Creature from the Black Lagoon, Day the World Ended, The Crawling Eye, old Universal horror movies. But I love exploitation fare. The things that would show up on Shock Theater, I grew up outside of Chicago, all black and white, sneaking into the library after I had been put to bed and watching Creature from Blood Island, just some scary weird old stuff. That was so exciting. I have fond memories of that.
Since this is an interview for Mr. Skin, do you recall the first time you saw a sex scene in a mainstream movie?
I didn't see the movie, because I was too young to get into the theater, but I remember at the Catlow Theater in Barrington, Illinois, there was a movie that was for adults only that was called The Bramble Bush. I remember the poster. There was a woman maybe in a bra and panties, which was very risqu?or that time. I don't even know, it was late '50s, early '60s. I didn't even see the movie, but there was something salacious about it, something forbidden, something very adult, and that was very titillating to me.
The first sex scene I ever saw in a movie, I have actually no recollection. I want to have a recollection because I've certainly seen a lot of them. Yes! I do remember the first naked woman I saw in a movie. It was Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet. She's Dr. Morbius's daughter. When she is swimming naked, innocent, and the animals are around the pond (Picture: 1), and I think Leslie Nielsen is her love interest, he's the captain of the flying saucer. She says, "Hey, come on in." He turns a corner and she's naked! I guess she was wearing a flesh-tone body stocking or something, but I remember that was very exciting.
Who are other sexy screen sirens that flip your lid?
There's a girl, an actress, from a bunch of exploitation films named Athena Massey (Picture: 1), who is very exciting. She's my idea of a sexy siren. She's brunette, very pretty, stacked, and she's a killer.
I read that you used to work for National Lampoon. Did you write any of those sexy fumettis, you know photo funnies, that used to run in the magazine?
I did! The first time I was in the Lampoon was for a photo funny. I had a costume of giant lobster parts that I had fashioned working at a fish market on Martha's Vineyard. I had a friend who was friends with Tony Hendra, who was one of the editors back then. I showed him my lobster costume, giant claws and a giant lobster hat, nosepiece, lobster knuckles as a belt buckle. Then I had some smaller lobster heads as shoes. I'd wear that bare-chested with some swimming trunks.
[Hendra] wrote a scenario of me as a waiter in a restaurant, taking an order, and people going, "Waiter, I'd like a lobster." And I'd go, "That's not a good idea." And they'd say, "Well, what about a person?" I'd say, "Excellent choice." Something dumb like that. But that got me in there. I was a contributing editor for something like ten years. I did a lot in the "True" section. I would go to the photo libraries of AP and come up with ideas like bullfighters getting tossed in the air by bulls. I'd find different pictures and they'd print a page of seven or eight images. One called "Our Ladies of the Laboratory," which was a bunch of nuns doing scientific things.
You were in HBO's Carniv?, but now that it's not returning, what's next?
There's a movie I did in Alabama called Home Sick and that's coming out through Synapse Films, I believe. I have a feeling it's going to be DVD, but you never know. It's the first movie by a director named Adam Wingard. It's kind of a Gummo slasher movie, and I play a demented inspirational speaker named Mr. Suitcase. That was a thrill.
Finally, as the father of two daughters, has your appreciation of violent horror movies waned at all? I mean, as a father, when I'm watching some guy get eviscerated, I'm thinking, "His poor mother!"
Obviously, I wouldn't bring my six year old to see The Devil's Rejects. But it's funny because my job as an actor is to go to places that people are unwilling or unable to get to, and to try my hardest to get there and make it look real. My other eighteen-year-old daughter is out of the nest and free to do whatever she wants to do.
Early on, with my oldest daughter, I used to watch all the Disney movies. Back in the days of VHS tapes. When she was six or seven, whenever she got into videos, she'd like to see Milo and Otis like ten times. I didn't like putting my kids in front of the TV and leaving them. They're going to be in front of the TV, I'm going to be there with them, and we're going to watch together. I finally said, "I can't watch Milo and Otis one more time, so let's try to find something that we both like." Which is pretty easy because I'm kind of a kid at heart.
I started showing her Godzilla movies. She really got into them. I said, "That's not real, so you don't have to take it to your dreams." But she loves Minya [son of Godzilla]. It did me proud at the age of nine or ten when she'd be able to recite all of Godzilla's adversaries. I'd say, "Who's the crab monster?" "Hera!" "What's the name of the spider?" "Spiga!" I was proud of her. I'd show her off, but nobody appreciated it as much as I did.
This is fun stuff. It's not supposed to scar you for life. I remember seeing House of 1000 Corpses and families would bring their small children to see it. It's disturbing because a lot of times they would get very frightened and their parents would laugh at them. That wasn't good. I've done some horror conventions where parents would come up and proudly push forth a five year old that could recite lines from House of 1000 Corpses, and that's kind of cool in a way, but it's also a little bit frightening. "Hey, Johnny loves Otis!"
Stay away from little Johnny.
Yeah, Johnny's got a bumpy road ahead.
