Section J page 5
Lone Star Outtakes: Leatherface lives
05/03/2002

By JANE SUMNER / The Dallas Morning News

"Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay's company Platinum Dunes is planning a 
remake of the 1974 cult horror classic The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and 
Dallas and Austin are in the running for the less grisly "revisualization."

Gary Bond of the Austin Film Office and location specialist Amy Cadenhead of 
the state film commission recently scouted the Austin area with a 
representative of the film, who will also check out the Dallas area.

The original gorefest, made for $140,000, was shot in Austin, the Bagdad 
Cemetery in Leander, Bastrop and Round Rock. In 1986, co-writer-director 
Tobe Hooper returned to Austin with a sequel written by L.M. Kit Carson .

Reportedly, Tobe and original co-writer Kim Henkel of Port Aransas did a 
first draft now being worked on by scribe Scott Kosar , whose The Machinist 
script was optioned by the Coen brothers.

Last month, Variety noted that Mr. Bay, who sits on a directors committee 
against violence, will tone down TCM's bloody stuff and make it less 
explicit and gruesome. "