Some very important excerpts (in my opinion) from Gunnar’s book, “Chain Saw Confidential” (any typos are mine):
“The Cook berates Leatherface for the door, and then wants to know what happened to ‘them other kids’. The terrified Leatherface is desperate to reassure him. Bent down in subservience, he backs away, moving around the kitchen squawking and squealing and patting different objects - the freezer, the butcher’s table, Franklin’s wheelchair. It’s bizarrely funny to see this massive man with a voice like the squawk of a parrot. Originally, Leatherface had some lines in this scene - not that they were intelligible. But they were written out. His first line is, ‘A ab e y ob er wew ober.’ Then, after a few moments he says, ‘Ibe goba igee em a.” Though seeming gibberish, the lines were actually supposed to mean something, as Tobe explained to me. According to what I wrote in my script, the first line meant roughly, ‘How are you? Welcome home. Supper’s almost ready.’ The next line meant, ‘I’ve been a good boy and I got ‘em all.’ There were some more lines over the next couple of minutes - they all pretty much went the same way. (My favorite line, intended as a ‘hello-how-are-you-sit-here’ greeting to Grandpa when Leatherface brings some cold cuts from the kitchen, was ‘Aba de ah du o day; erik beaka obida tey.’ Pure poetry, echoing Stephen Foster and the Beatles. Tobe wanted me to deliver these lines as if Leatherface knew what he was trying to say but could not quite get his mouth to work right. Thus, ‘Ibe goba igee em a’ could, with a stretch of the imagination, sound a bit like, ‘I’ve been a good boy and I got ‘em all.’ The rhythm is sort of there. So I did it that way on the first take. Tobe called ‘Cut!’ Nope, he said, it did not work. The problem was that there was too much intelligence in Leatherface if he merely had trouble getting the words to come out right. I agree - my sense of him was that he was so empty that he really could not speak. So Tobe told me to do it again. This time I should think of Leatherface as knowing that these sounds we make mean something - after all, he understands what his brothers tell him - but he does not know how to form a thought and turn that thought into words, intelligible or not. I tried it that way, making a series of meaningless squawks and pointing around the room as if Leatherface actually thought he was saying something. It worked, and we stuck with that for the rest of Leatherface’s lines. Some we dropped entirely, since they were pointless. My favorite line ‘interpretation’ was when Leatherface is defending himself from the Cook and his raised broomstick. The line was written, ‘I iba i i iba i,’ meaning ‘yes.’ I said, ‘Ibe!’ It was high-pitched and thin, and summed it all up for me. I still say it now and then, usually when I’m taking a walk in the woods and think of Leatherface for no reason.”
and
“The Hitchhiker asks, ‘You like that face?’ In the film Leatherface says nothing, but in the script he says, ‘Un va uhn,’ curiously like the old 1950s jazz hipster’s ‘Va, va, voom!’ My script margin notes indicated the meaning to be ‘I like it,’ but this line and the rest in the scene were cut - after Tobe’s earlier change in line readings, there was no point in having Leatherface try to speak again beyond occasional squawks.”
and
“There is an undertone of sexual menace in the pair’s approach, but nothing happens. After toying with her they retreat. Clearly, though, Leatherface likes what he sees. Leatherface’s sexual ambiguity was originally carried further in the filming, in a scene edited out before the movie’s release. In the script, almost immediately after this, Leatherface wanders into the living room while ‘tittering and babbling to himself’ (as I wrote in my script), making sounds that were supposed to say ‘You’re so pretty!’ Leatherface shambles over to a bucket of faces hanging from the ceiling. He grabs one and looks at it. Its blonde hair looks to be cut in a pageboy. He picks up a small hand mirror and compares the new mask to his current one, deciding which looks better. He rejects the new one, tossing it over his shoulder. (It is obvious in looking at this footage how hard it was for me to see out of the mask. When I looked down to pick up the mirror, I had to tilt my head straight down to see it.). Leatherface bends down again and picks up some face powder. He powders his face grotesquely, the powder flying everywhere in a caricature of some feminine cliché of an earlier time. Then he applies fresh lipstick, doing it with some delicacy, as if sometime in the past he watched his mother putting on her lipstick. Then, checking out his spruce-up in his mirror, he cocks his head to the side, as if admiring what he sees before he returns to the dining room. I do not think Leatherface is really trying to look feminine in this scene - nor did I back then. After all, he is wearing a suit, not a dress. But he wants to look attractive to Sally. His gender is irrelevant here, as if he really has no sexual identity. But he is smitten by their prisoner.” God, I love this book. I love all these little looks deeper into the character’s mind from the man who first brought him to life. And he canonly calls himself a good boy, I am dead
