document_title: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

question_text: who played leatherface in texas chainsaw massacre 1974

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

text: Plot

text: Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) and her paraplegic brother, Franklin (Paul A. Partain), travel with three friends, Jerry (Allen Danziger), Kirk (William Vail), and Pam (Teri McMinn), to visit the grave of the Hardestys' grandfather to investigate reports of vandalism and grave robbing. Afterwards, they decide to visit the old Hardesty family homestead. Along the way, they pick up a hitchhiker (Edwin Neal) who talks about his family who worked at the old slaughterhouse. He borrows Franklin's pocket-knife and cuts himself, then takes a Polaroid picture of the others and demands money for it. When they refuse to pay, he burns the photo and slashes Franklin's arm with a straight razor. The group forces him out of the van and drive on. They stop at a gas station to refuel, but the proprietor (Jim Siedow) tells them the pumps are empty.

text: They continue toward the homestead, intending to return to the gas station once it has received a fuel delivery. When they arrive, Franklin tells Kirk and Pam about a local swimming-hole and the couple head off to find it. They stumble upon a nearby house. Kirk calls out for gas, entering through the unlocked door, while Pam waits outside. Leatherface (Gunnar Hansen) appears and kills Kirk with a hammer. Pam enters soon after and trips into a room filled with furniture made from human bones. She attempts to flee, but Leatherface catches her and impales her on a meathook, making her watch as he butchers Kirk with a chainsaw. Jerry heads out to look for Pam and Kirk at sunset. He sees the house and finds Pam, still alive, inside a freezer. Before he can react, Leatherface kills him.

text: With darkness falling, Sally and Franklin set out to find their friends. As they near the neighboring house and call out, Leatherface lunges from the darkness and kills Franklin with a chainsaw. Sally runs toward the house and finds the desiccated remains of an elderly couple upstairs. She escapes from Leatherface by jumping through a second-floor window and flees to the gas station. The proprietor calms her with offers of help but then ties her up, gags her and forces her into his truck. He drives to the house, arriving at the same time as the hitchhiker, now revealed as Leatherface's brother. The hitchhiker recognizes Sally and taunts her.

text: The men torment the bound and gagged Sally while Leatherface, now dressed as a woman, serves dinner. Leatherface and the hitchhiker bring down Grandpa (John Dugan), one of the desiccated bodies from upstairs. He is revealed to be alive when he sucks blood from a cut on Sally's finger. They decide that Grandpa, the best killer in the old slaughterhouse, should kill Sally. He tries to hit her with a hammer but is too weak. In the ensuing confusion, she breaks free, leaps through a window, and flees to the road. Leatherface and the hitchhiker give chase, but the latter is run over and killed by a passing truck. Armed with his chainsaw, Leatherface attacks the truck when the driver stops to help; the driver knocks down Leatherface with a pipe wrench, causing the chainsaw to cut his leg. The driver flees, and Sally escapes in the back of a passing pickup truck as Leatherface dances maniacally in the road with his chainsaw.

text: Production

text: Development

text: The concept for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre arose in the early 1970s while Tobe Hooper was working as an assistant film director at the University of Texas at Austin and as a documentary cameraman.[3] He had already developed a story involving the elements of isolation, the woods, and darkness.[4] He credited the graphic coverage of violence by San Antonio news outlets as one inspiration for the film[5] and based elements of the plot on serial killer Ed Gein in 1950s Wisconsin;[6] Gein inspired other horror films such as Psycho (1960) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).[7][8][9][10] During development, Hooper used the working titles of Headcheese and Leatherface.[11][12]

text:
I definitely studied Gein... but I also noticed a murder case in Houston at the time, a serial murderer you probably remember named Elmer Wayne Henley. He was a young man who recruited victims for an older homosexual man. I saw some news report where Elmer Wayne... said, "I did these crimes, and I'm gonna stand up and take it like a man." Well, that struck me as interesting, that he had this conventional morality at that point. He wanted it known that, now that he was caught, he would do the right thing. So this kind of moral schizophrenia is something I tried to build into the characters.

— Kim Henkel[13][14]

tag: div

text: Hooper has cited changes in the cultural and political landscape as central influences on the film. His intentional misinformation, that the "film you are about to see is true", was a response to being "lied to by the government about things that were going on all over the world", including Watergate, the 1973 oil crisis, and "the massacres and atrocities in the Vietnam War".[5] The "lack of sentimentality and the brutality of things" that Hooper noticed while watching the local news, whose graphic coverage was epitomized by "showing brains spilled all over the road", led to his belief that "man was the real monster here, just wearing a different face, so I put a literal mask on the monster in my film".[8] The idea of using a chainsaw as the murder weapon came to Hooper while he was in the hardware section of a busy store, contemplating how to speed his way through the crowd.[9]

text: Hooper and Kim Henkel cowrote the screenplay and formed Vortex, Inc.[15] with Henkel as president and Hooper as vice president.[16] They asked Bill Parsley, a friend of Hooper, to provide funding. Parsley formed a company named MAB, Inc. through which he invested $60,000 in the production. In return, MAB owned 50% of the film and its profits.[17] Production manager Ron Bozman told most of the cast and crew that he would have to defer part of their salaries until after it was sold to a distributor. Vortex made the idea more attractive by awarding them a share of its potential profits, ranging from 0.25 to 6%, similar to mortgage points. The cast and crew were not informed that Vortex owned only 50%, which meant their points were worth half of the assumed value.[16][18]

text: Casting

text: Many of the cast members at the time were relatively unknown actors—Texans who had played roles in commercials, television, and stage shows, as well as performers whom Hooper knew personally, such as Allen Danziger and Jim Siedow.[19][20][21] Involvement in the film propelled some of them into the motion picture industry. The lead role of Sally was given to Marilyn Burns, who had appeared previously on stage and served on the film commission board at UT Austin while studying there.[20] Teri McMinn was a student who worked with local theater companies, including the Dallas Theater Center.[20] Henkel called McMinn to come in for a reading after he spotted her picture in the Austin American-Statesman.[22] For her last call-back he requested that she wear short shorts, which proved to be the most comfortable of all the cast members' costumes.[20]

text: Icelandic-American actor Gunnar Hansen was selected for the role of Leatherface.[23] He regarded Leatherface as being mentally retarded and having never learned to speak properly. To research his character in preparation for his role, Hansen visited a special needs school and watched how the students moved and spoke.[9][24] John Larroquette performed the narration in the opening credits.[25]

text: Filming

text: The primary filming location was an early 1900s farmhouse located on Quick Hill Road near Round Rock, Texas, where the La Frontera development is now located.[26] The small budget and concerns over high-cost equipment rentals meant the crew filmed seven days a week, up to 16 hours a day. The environment was humid[18][27] and the cast and crew found conditions tough; temperatures peaked at 110°F (43 °C) on July 26.[28] Hansen later recalled, "It was 95, 100 degrees every day during filming. They wouldn't wash my costume because they were worried that the laundry might lose it, or that it would change color. They didn't have enough money for a second costume. So I wore that [mask] 12 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for a month."[29]

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was mainly shot using an Eclair NPR 16mm camera[11][30] with fine-grain, low-speed film that required four times more light than modern digital cameras.[31] Most of the filming took place in the farmhouse, which was filled with furniture constructed from animal bones and a latex material used as upholstery to give the appearance of human skin.[32] The house was not cooled, and there was little ventilation. The crew covered its walls with drops of animal blood obtained from a local slaughterhouse.[5] Art director Robert A. Burns drove around the countryside and collected the remains of cattle and other animals in various stages of decomposition, with which he littered the floors of the house.[32]

text: The special effects were simple and limited by the budget.[33] The on-screen blood was real in some cases,[34] such as the scene in which Leatherface feeds "Grandpa". The crew had difficulty getting the stage blood to come out of its tube, so instead Burns's index finger was cut with a razor.[35] Burns's costume was so drenched with stage blood that it was "virtually solid" by the last day of shooting.[20] The scene in which Leatherface decapitates Kirk with a chainsaw worried actor William Vail (Kirk). After telling Vail to stay still lest he really be killed, Hansen brought the running chainsaw to within 3 inches (8 cm) of Vail's face.[30] A real hammer was used for the climactic scene at the end, with some takes also featuring a mock-up. However, the actor playing Grandpa was aiming for the floor rather than his victim's head.[36] Still, the shoot was somewhat dangerous, with Hooper noting at the wrap party that all cast members had obtained some level of injury. He stated that "everyone hated me by the end of the production" and that "it just took years for them to kind of cool off."[36][37]

text: Post-production

text: The production exceeded its original $60,000 (about $291376.52 adjusted for inflation) budget during editing.[38] Sources differ on the film's final cost, offering figures between $93,000 (about $451633.60 inflation-adjusted) and $300,000 (about $1456882.59 inflation-adjusted).[23][39][40][41] A film production group, Pie in the Sky, provided $23,532 (about $114277.87 inflation-adjusted) in exchange for 19% of Vortex.[42] This left Henkel, Hooper and the rest of the cast and crew with a 40.5% stake.[16] Warren Skaaren, then head of the Texas Film Commission, helped secure the distribution deal with Bryanston Pictures.[17] David Foster, producer of the 1982 horror film The Thing, arranged for a private screening for some of Bryanston Pictures' West Coast executives, and received 1.5% of Vortex's profits and a deferred fee of $500 (about $2428.14 inflation-adjusted).[16]

text: On August 28, 1974, Louis Peraino of Bryanston agreed to distribute the film worldwide, from which Bozman and Skaaren would receive $225,000 (about $1092661.94 inflation-adjusted) and 35% of the profits. Years later Bozman stated, "We made a deal with the devil, [sigh], and I guess that, in a way, we got what we deserved."[16] They signed the contract with Bryanston and, after the investors recouped their money (with interest),—and after Skaaren, the lawyers, and the accountants were paid—only $8,100 (about $39335.83 inflation-adjustedn) was left to be divided among the 20 cast and crew members.[16] Eventually the producers sued Bryanston for failing to pay them their full percentage of the box office profits. A court judgment instructed Bryanston to pay the filmmakers $500,000 (about $2428137.65 inflation-adjusted), but by then the company had declared bankruptcy. In 1983 New Line Cinema acquired the distribution rights from Bryanston and gave the producers a larger share of the profits.[43]

text: Release

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre premiered in Austin, Texas on October 1, 1974, almost a year after filming concluded. It screened nationally in the United States as a Saturday afternoon matinée and its false marketing as a "true story" helped it attract a broad audience.[44][45] For eight years after 1976, it was annually reissued to first-run theaters, promoted by full-page ads.[46] The film eventually grossed more than $30 million in the United States and Canada[47] ($14.4 million in rentals), making it the 12th highest-grossing film initially released in 1974, despite its minuscule budget.[48] Among independent films, it was overtaken in 1978 by John Carpenter's Halloween, which grossed $47 million.[49]

text:
The film which you are about to see is an account of the tragedy which befell a group of five youths, in particular Sally Hardesty and her invalid brother, Franklin. [...]

— The opening crawl falsely suggests that the film is based on true events, a conceit that contributed to its success.

text: Hooper reportedly hoped that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) would give the complete, uncut release print a "PG" rating due to its minimal amount of visible gore.[50][51][52] Instead, it was originally rated "X". After several minutes were cut, it was resubmitted to the MPAA and received an "R" rating. A distributor apparently restored the offending material, and at least one theater presented the full version under an "R".[53] In San Francisco, cinema-goers walked out of theaters in disgust[54] and, in February 1976, two theaters in Ottawa, Canada, were advised by local police to withdraw the film lest they face morality charges.[55]

text: After its initial British release, including a one-year theatrical run in London,[56] The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was initially banned on the advice of British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) Secretary Stephen Murphy, and subsequently by his successor, James Ferman.[57][58] While the British ban was in force the word "chainsaw" itself was barred from movie titles, forcing imitators to rename their films.[59] In 1998, despite the BBFC ban, Camden London Borough Council granted the film a license.[60] The following year the BBFC passed The Texas Chain Saw Massacre for release with an 18 certificate (indicating that it should not be seen or purchased by a person under 18),[61] and it was broadcast a year later on Channel 4.[62][63]

text: The Australian censors refused to classify the 83-minute version of the film in June 1975;[64] the board similarly refused classification of a 77-minute print in December that year.[65] In 1981, an 83-minute version submitted by Greater Union Organization Film Distributors was again refused registration.[66] It was later submitted by Filmways Australia and approved for an "R" rating in 1984.[67][68] It was banned for periods in many other countries, including Brazil, Chile, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Sweden and West Germany.[69][70][71]

text: Reception

text: Critical response

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre received a mixed reaction upon its initial release. Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times called it "despicable" and described Henkel and Hooper as more concerned with creating a realistic atmosphere than with its "plastic script".[72] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times said it was "as violent and gruesome and blood-soaked as the title promises", yet praised its acting and technical execution.[73][74] Patrick Taggart of the Austin American-Statesman hailed it as the most important horror film since George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968).[75] Variety found the picture to be well-made, despite what it called the "heavy doses of gore".[76] John McCarty of Cinefantastique stated that the house featured in the film made the Bates motel "look positively pleasant by comparison".[77] Revisiting the film in his 1976 article "Fashions in Pornography" for Harper's Magazine, Stephen Koch found its sadistic violence to be extreme and unimaginative.[78]

text:
Horror and exploitation films almost always turn a profit if they're brought in at the right price. So they provide a good starting place for ambitious would-be filmmakers who can't get more conventional projects off the ground. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre belongs in a select company (with Night of the Living Dead and Last House on the Left) of films that are really a lot better than the genre requires. Not, however, that you'd necessarily enjoy seeing it.

— Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times[73]

text: Critics later frequently praised both the film's aesthetic quality and its power. Observing that it managed to be "horrifying without being a bloodbath (you'll see more gore in a Steven Seagal film)", Bruce Westbrook of the Houston Chronicle called it "a backwoods masterpiece of fear and loathing".[79] TV Guide thought it was "intelligent" in its "bloodless depiction of violence",[80] while Anton Bitel felt the fact that it was banned in the United Kingdom was a tribute to its artistry. He pointed out how the quiet sense of foreboding at the beginning of the film grows, until the viewer experiences "a punishing assault on the senses".[81] In Hick Flicks: The Rise and Fall of Redneck Cinema, Scott Von Doviak commended its effective use of daylight shots, unusual among horror films, such as the sight of a corpse draped over a tombstone in the opening sequence.[82] Mike Emery of The Austin Chronicle praised the film's "subtle touches"—such as radio broadcasts heard in the background describing grisly murders around Texas—and said that what made it so dreadful was that it never strayed too far from potential reality.[83]

text: It has often been described as one of the scariest films of all time.[84] Rex Reed called it the most terrifying film he had ever seen.[85] Empire described it as "the most purely horrifying horror movie ever made" and called it "never less than totally committed to scaring you witless".[86] Reminiscing about his first viewing of the film, horror director Wes Craven recalled wondering "what kind of Mansonite crazoid" could have created such a thing.[87] It is a work of "cataclysmic terror", in the words of horror novelist Stephen King, who declared, "I would happily testify to its redeeming social merit in any court in the country."[88] Critic Robin Wood found it one of the few horror films to possess "the authentic quality of nightmare".[89] Based on 56 reviews published since 2000, the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 88% of critics gave it a positive review, with an average score of 7.9 out of 10.[90]

text: Cultural impact

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is considered one of the greatest—and most controversial—of horror films,[91][92] and a major influence on the genre.[41][93] In 1999 Richard Zoglin of Time commented that it had "set a new standard for slasher films".[94] The Times listed it as one of the 50 most controversial films of all time.[95] Tony Magistrale believes the film paved the way for horror to be used as a vehicle for social commentary.[96] Describing it as "cheap, grubby and out of control", Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times declared that it "both defines and entirely supersedes the very notion of the exploitation picture".[97] In his book Dark Romance: Sexuality in the Horror Film, David Hogan called it "the most affecting gore thriller of all and, in a broader view, among the most effective horror films ever made ... the driving force of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is something far more horrible than aberrant sexuality: total insanity."[98][99] According to Bill Nichols, it "achieves the force of authentic art, profoundly disturbing, intensely personal, yet at the same time far more than personal".[100] Leonard Wolf praised the film as "...an exquisite work of art" and compared it to a Greek tragedy, noting the lack of onscreen violence.[101]

text: Leatherface has gained a reputation as a significant character in the horror genre,[102][103] responsible for establishing the use of conventional tools as murder weapons and the image of a large, silent killer devoid of personality.[104][105] Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com said, "In our collective consciousness, Leatherface and his chainsaw have become as iconic as Freddy and his razors or Jason and his hockey mask."[106] Don Sumner called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre a classic that not only introduced a new villain to the horror pantheon but also influenced an entire generation of filmmakers.[107] According to Rebecca Ascher-Walsh of Entertainment Weekly, it laid the foundations for future horror franchises such as Halloween, The Evil Dead, and The Blair Witch Project.[108] Ridley Scott cited it as an inspiration for his 1979 film Alien.[109][110] French director Alexandre Aja credited it as an early influence on his career.[111] Horror filmmaker and heavy metal musician Rob Zombie sees it as a major influence on his art, most notably his 2003 film House of 1000 Corpses.[112]

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was selected for the 1975 Cannes Film Festival Directors' Fortnight[56] and London Film Festival.[48] In 1976, it won the Special Jury Prize at the Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival in France.[113] Entertainment Weekly ranked the film sixth on its 2003 list of "The Top 50 Cult Films".[114] In a 2005 Total Film poll, it was selected as the greatest horror film of all time.[91][115] It was named among Time's top 25 horror films in 2007.[116] In 2008 the film ranked number 199 on Empire magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time".[117] Empire also ranked it 46th in its list of the 50 greatest independent films.[118] In a 2010 Total Film poll, it was again selected as the greatest horror film; the judging panel included veteran horror directors such as John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and George A. Romero.[119] In 2010, as well, The Guardian ranked it number 14 on its list of the top 25 horror films.[120] The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was inducted into the Horror Hall of Fame in 1990, with director Hooper accepting the award,[121] and it is part of the permanent collection of New York City's Museum of Modern Art.[41] In 2012, the film was named by critics in the British Film Institute's Sight & Sound magazine as one of the 250 greatest films.[122] The Academy Film Archive houses the Texas Chain Saw Massacre collection, which contains over 50 items in a collection representing many original elements of the film.[123]

text: Themes and analysis

text: The underlying themes of the film have been the subject of extensive critical discussion; critics and scholars have interpreted it as a paradigmatic exploitation film in which female protagonists are subjected to brutal, sadistic violence.[124][125] Stephen Prince comments that the horror is "born of the torment of the young woman subjected to imprisonment and abuse amid decaying arms... and mobiles made of human bones and teeth."[126] As with many horror films, it focuses on the "final girl" trope—the heroine and inevitable lone survivor who somehow escapes the horror that befalls the other characters:[127][128] Sally Hardesty is wounded and tortured, yet manages to survive with the help of a male truck driver.[129] Critics argue that even in exploitation films in which the ratio of male and female deaths is roughly equal, the images that linger will be of the violence committed against the female characters.[127][130][131] The specific case of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre provides support for this argument: three men are killed in quick fashion, but one woman is brutally slaughtered—hung on a meathook—and the surviving woman endures physical and mental torture.[132] In 1977, critic Mary Mackey described the meathook scene as probably the most brutal onscreen female death in any commercially distributed film.[133] She placed it in a lineage of violent films that depict women as weak and incapable of protecting themselves.[133]

text: In one study, a group of men were shown five films depicting differing levels of violence against women.[134] On first viewing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre they experienced symptoms of depression and anxiety; however, upon subsequent viewing they found the violence against women less offensive and more enjoyable.[132] Another study, investigating gender-specific perceptions of slasher films, involved 30 male and 30 female university students.[135] One male participant described the screaming, especially Sally's, as the "most freaky thing" in the film.[135]

text: According to Jesse Stommel of Bright Lights Film Journal, the lack of explicit violence in the film forces viewers to question their own fascination with violence that they play a central role in imagining.[136] Nonetheless—citing its feverish camera moves, repeated bursts of light, and auditory pandemonium—Stommel asserts that it involves the audience primarily on a sensory rather than an intellectual level.[136]

text:
Hooper's apocalyptic landscape is... a desert wasteland of dissolution where once vibrant myth is desiccated. The ideas and iconography of Cooper, Bret Harte and Francis Parkman are now transmogrified into yards of dying cattle, abandoned gasoline stations, defiled graveyards, crumbling mansions, and a ramshackle farmhouse of psychotic killers. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre [is]... recognizable as a statement about the dead end of American experience.

— Christopher Sharrett[137]

text: Critic Christopher Sharrett argues that since Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and The Birds (1963), the American horror film has been defined by the questions it poses "about the fundamental validity of the American civilizing process",[138] concerns amplified during the 1970s by the "delegitimation of authority in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate".[139] "If Psycho began an exploration of a new sense of absurdity in contemporary life, of the collapse of causality and the diseased underbelly of American Gothic", he writes, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre "carries this exploration to a logical conclusion, addressing many of the issues of Hitchcock's film while refusing comforting closure".[140]

text: Robin Wood characterizes Leatherface and his family as victims of industrial capitalism, their jobs as slaughterhouse workers having been rendered obsolete by technological advances.[141] He states that the picture "brings to focus a spirit of negativity... that seems to lie not far below the surface of the modern collective consciousness".[142] Naomi Merritt explores the film's representation of "cannibalistic capitalism" in relation to Georges Bataille's theory of taboo and transgression.[143] She elaborates on Wood's analysis, stating that the Sawyer family's values "reflect, or correspond to, established and interdependent American institutions... but their embodiment of these social units is perverted and transgressive."[144]

text: In Kim Newman's view, Hooper's presentation of the Sawyer family during the dinner scene parodies a typical American sitcom family: the gas station owner is the bread-winning father figure; the killer Leatherface is depicted as a bourgeois housewife; the hitchhiker acts as the rebellious teenager.[145] Isabel Cristina Pinedo, author of Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing, states, "The horror genre must keep terror and comedy in tension if it is to successfully tread the thin line that separates it from terrorism and parody ... this delicate balance is struck in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which the decaying corpse of Grandpa not only incorporates horrific and humorous effects, but actually uses one to exacerbate the other."[146]

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has also been described as "the ultimate pro-vegetarian film" due to its animal rights themes. In a video essay, film critic Rob Ager describes the irony in humans being slaughtered for meat, putting humans in the position of being slaughtered like farm animals. Director Tobe Hooper gave up meat while making the film, and said "In a way I thought the heart of the film was about meat; it’s about the chain of life and killing sentient beings."[147][148]

text: Post-release

text: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre has appeared on various home video formats. In the US, it was first released on videotape and CED in the early 1980s by Wizard Video and Vestron Video.[149][150] The British Board of Film Classification had long since refused a certification for the uncut theatrical version and in 1984 they also refused to certify it for home video, amid a moral panic surrounding "video nasties".[151] After the retirement of BBFC Director James Ferman in 1999, the board passed the film uncut for theatrical and video distribution with an 18 certificate, almost 25 years after the original release.[152] The Texas Chain Saw Massacre was initially released on DVD in October 1998 in the United States,[153] May 2000 in the United Kingdom[154] and 2001 in Australia.

text: In 2005 the film received a 2K scan and full restoration from the original 16mm A/B rolls,[155] which was subsequently released on DVD and Blu-ray. In 2014 an additional, even more extensive 4K restoration, using the original 16mm A/B reversal rolls, was carried out.[156] After a screening in the Directors' Fortnight section of the 2014 Cannes Film Festival,[157] this was also released on DVD and Blu-ray worldwide. Dark Sky Films' US 40th Anniversary Edition was nominated for Best DVD/BD Special Edition Release at the 2015 Saturn Awards.[158]

text: In 1982, shortly after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre established itself as a success on US home video, Wizard Video released a mass-market video game adaptation for the Atari 2600.[159] In the game, the player assumes the role of Leatherface and attempts to murder trespassers while avoiding obstacles such as fences and cow skulls.[159] As one of the first horror-themed video games, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre caused controversy when it was first released due to its violent nature; it sold poorly as a result, because many game stores refused to stock it.[160][161]

text: The film has been followed by seven other films to date, including sequels, prequels and remakes. The first sequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), was considerably more graphic and violent than the original and was banned in Australia for 20 years before it was released on DVD in a revised special edition in October 2006.[162] Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) was the second sequel to appear, though Hooper did not return to direct due to scheduling conflicts with another film, Spontaneous Combustion.[163] Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, starring Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey, was released in 1995. While briefly acknowledging the events of the preceding two sequels, its plot makes it a virtual remake of the 1974 original.[164] A straight remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, was released by Platinum Dunes and New Line Cinema in 2003.[165] It was followed by a prequel, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, in 2006. A seventh film, Texas Chainsaw 3D, was released on January 4, 2013.[165] It is a direct sequel to the original 1974 film, with no relation to the 2003 or 2006 films.[166][167] The 2017 prequel, Leatherface will be released exclusively to DirecTV on September 21, 2017, before receiving a wider release on Video on demand and in limited theaters, simultaneously, in North America on October 20, 2017.[168]

text: Notes

text: Jump up ^ While the original theatrical release poster and many references to the film render its title as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the official spelling is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, per the film's opening credits. This is also the title under which the film is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.[2]

tag: ol


document_title: Latrodectus

question_text: where do you find the black widow spider

root

text: Latrodectus

text: Description[edit]

text: Female widow spiders are typically dark brown or a shiny black in colour when they are full grown, usually exhibiting a red or orange hourglass on the ventral surface (underside) of the abdomen; some may have a pair of red spots or have no marking at all. The male widow spiders often exhibit various red or red and white markings on the dorsal surface (upper side) of the abdomen, ranging from a single stripe to bars or spots. Females of a few species are paler brown and some have no bright markings. The bodies of black widow spiders range from 3–10 millimetres (0.12–0.39 in) in size; some females can measure 13 millimetres (0.51 in) in their body length.[3]

tag: p

text: Behavior[edit]

text: The prevalence of sexual cannibalism, a behavior in which the female eats the male after mating, has inspired the common name "widow spiders".[4] This behaviour may promote the survival odds of the offspring;[5] however, females of some species only rarely show this behaviour, and much of the documented evidence for sexual cannibalism has been observed in laboratory cages where the males could not escape. Male black widow spiders tend to select their mates by determining if the female has eaten already to avoid being eaten themselves. They are able to tell if the female has fed by sensing chemicals in the web.[6][7]

text: Like other members of the family Theridiidae, widow spiders construct a web of irregular, tangled, sticky silken fibres. Black widow spiders prefer to nest near the ground in dark and undisturbed areas, usually in small holes produced by animals, or around construction openings or wood piles. Indoor nests are in dark, undisturbed places as well such as under desks or furniture or in a basement.[8] The spider very frequently hangs upside down near the centre of its web and waits for insects to blunder in and get stuck. Then, before the insect can extricate itself, the spider rushes over to bite it and wrap it in silk. To feed, it uses its fangs to inject digestive enzymes, liquefying the prey's internal organs.[9] Their prey consists of small insects such as flies, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, beetles, and caterpillars.[9] If the spider perceives a threat, it quickly lets itself down to the ground on a safety line of silk. As with other web-weavers, these spiders have very poor eyesight and depend on vibrations reaching them through their webs to find trapped prey or warn them of larger threats. When a widow spider is trapped, it is unlikely to bite, preferring to play dead or flick silk at the potential threat; bites are the result of continual harassment.[10] While some species are more aggressive, most are not; many injuries to humans are due to defensive bites delivered when a spider gets unintentionally squeezed or pinched.

text: The ultimate tensile strength and other physical properties of Latrodectus hesperus (western black widow) silk were found to be similar to the properties of silk from orb-weaving spiders that had been tested in other studies. The tensile strength for the three kinds of silk measured in the Blackledge study was about 1,000 MPa. The ultimate strength reported in a previous study for Nephila edulis was 1,290 ± 160 MPa.[11] The tensile strength of spider silk is comparable to that of steel wire of the same thickness.[12][not in citation given] However, as the density of steel is about six times that of silk,[13] silk is correspondingly stronger than steel wire of the same weight.

text: Spiders of the genus Steatoda (also of the Theridiidae family) are often mistaken for widow spiders, and are known as "false widow spiders"; they are significantly less harmful to humans.

text: Taxonomy[edit]

text: The genus Latrodectus was erected by Walckenaer in 1805, for the species Latrodectus tredecimguttatus and Latrodectus mactans.[1][14] Arachnologist Herbert Walter Levi revised the genus in 1959, studying the female sexual organs and noting their similarity across described species. He concluded the colour variations were variable across the world and were not sufficient to warrant species status, and reclassified the redback and several other species as subspecies of the black widow spider.[15]

text: Levi also noted that study of the genus had been contentious; in 1902, both F.P Cambridge and Friedrich Dahl had revised the genus, with each criticising the other. Cambridge questioned Dahl's separating species on what he considered minor anatomical details, and the latter dismissed the former as an "ignoramus".[15]

text: Species[edit]

text: As of July 2017[update], the World Spider Catalog accepted the following species:[1]

text:
Latrodectus antheratus (Badcock, 1932) – Paraguay, Argentina
Latrodectus apicalis Butler, 1877 – Galapagos Is.
Latrodectus bishopi Kaston, 1938 – US
Latrodectus cinctus Blackwall, 1865 – Cape Verde Is., Africa, Kuwait, Iran
Latrodectus corallinus Abalos, 1980 – Argentina
Latrodectus curacaviensis (Müller, 1776) – Lesser Antilles, South America
Latrodectus dahli Levi, 1959 – Morocco to Central Asia
Latrodectus diaguita Carcavallo, 1960 – Argentina
Latrodectus elegans Thorell, 1898 – India, Myanmar, China, Japan
Latrodectus erythromelas Schmidt & Klaas, 1991 – India, Sri Lanka
Latrodectus geometricus C. L. Koch, 1841 – Cosmopolitan
Latrodectus hasselti Thorell, 1870 – Southeast Asia to Australia, New Zealand
Latrodectus hesperus Chamberlin & Ivie, 1935 – North America, Israel
Latrodectus hystrix Simon, 1890 – Yemen, Socotra
Latrodectus indistinctus O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1904 – Namibia, South Africa
Latrodectus karrooensis Smithers, 1944 – South Africa
Latrodectus katipo Powell, 1871 – New Zealand
Latrodectus lilianae Melic, 2000 – Spain, Algeria
Latrodectus mactans (Fabricius, 1775) – probably native to North America only (introduced elsewhere)
Latrodectus menavodi Vinson, 1863 – Madagascar, Comoro Is., Aldabra
Latrodectus mirabilis (Holmberg, 1876) – Argentina
Latrodectus obscurior Dahl, 1902 – Cape Verde Is., Madagascar
Latrodectus pallidus O. Pickard-Cambridge, 1872 – Cape Verde Is., Libya to Central Asia
Latrodectus quartus Abalos, 1980 – Argentina
Latrodectus renivulvatus Dahl, 1902 – Africa, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq
Latrodectus revivensis Shulov, 1948 – Israel
Latrodectus rhodesiensis Mackay, 1972 – Southern Africa
Latrodectus thoracicus Nicolet, 1849 – Chile
Latrodectus tredecimguttatus (Rossi, 1790) (type species) – Mediterranean to China
Latrodectus variegatus Nicolet, 1849 – Chile, Argentina
Latrodectus variolus Walckenaer, 1837 – US, Canada

tag: ul

text: Distribution[edit]

text: Widow spiders can be found on every continent of the world except Antarctica. In North America, the black widows commonly known as southern (Latrodectus mactans), western (Latrodectus hesperus), and northern (Latrodectus variolus) can be found in the United States, as well as parts of southern Canada – particularly in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia, as can the "gray" or "brown widow spiders" (Latrodectus geometricus) and the "red widow spiders" (Latrodectus bishopi).[16] The blue mud dauber (Chalybion californicum) is a wasp that, in the Western United States, is the primary predator of black widow spiders.[17]

text: The most prevalent species occurring in Australia is commonly called the redback (Latrodectus hasselti).

text: Bite[edit]

text: Due to the presence of latrotoxin in their venom, black widow bites are potentially dangerous and may result in systemic effects (latrodectism) including severe muscle pain, abdominal cramps, hyperhidrosis, tachycardia, and muscle spasms.[18] Symptoms usually last for 3–7 days, but may persist for several weeks.[19]

text: Each year, about 2,200 people report being bitten by a black widow, but most recover within 24 hours with medical treatment (male spiders produce the toxins to help with their own hunting, but they make such a diluted version that they are not harmful to most people). Also, many people who are bitten develop few symptoms since the spider may not inject its venom. Black widows are not especially aggressive spiders, and they rarely bite humans unless startled or otherwise threatened.[20]

text: Contrary to popular belief, most people who are bitten suffer no serious damage, let alone death. Fatal bites were reported in the early-20th century mostly with Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, the Mediterranean black widow.[21]

text: Since the venom is not likely to be life-threatening, antivenom has been used as pain relief and not to save lives.[22] However, a study demonstrated that standardized pain medication, when combined with either antivenom or a placebo, had similar improvements in pain and resolution of symptoms.[22]


document_title: True Detective (season 1)

question_text: who played the bad guy in true detective season 1

text: True Detective (season 1)

text: Episodes[edit]

text:
No.
overall
No. in
season
Title
Directed by
Written by
Original air date
U.S. viewers
(millions)

1
1
"The Long Bright Dark"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
January 12, 2014 (2014-01-12)
2.33[1]

Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, January 3, 1995. State homicide detectives Martin "Marty" Hart (Woody Harrelson) and Rustin "Rust" Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) investigate the murder of a prostitute, 28-year-old Dora Lange. Her corpse is found posed as if in prayer, her head is crowned with deer antlers, and her body is surrounded by twig latticeworks closely resembling Cajun bird traps. Hart and Cohle turn to a five-year-old missing-persons case of a child named Marie Fontenot. Around the same time, another child claimed to have been chased through the woods by a "green-eared spaghetti monster." At the insistence of his wife Maggie (Michelle Monaghan), Hart invites Cohle to dinner, but is infuriated when Cohle arrives drunk. While following up on the Fontenot disappearance, they discover another twig latticework.

Seventeen years later in May 2012, Hart and Cohle are separately interviewed about the Lange investigation by detectives Thomas Papania (Tory Kittles) and Maynard Gilbough (Michael Potts). Hart and Cohle have not spoken since an altercation in 2002. The crime scene of a recently slain woman closely resembles the Lange murder scene, suggesting that despite Cohle and Hart's claims of apprehending the killer in 1995, the killer may remain at large.

2
2
"Seeing Things"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
January 19, 2014 (2014-01-19)
1.67[2]

1995. Animosity between Cohle and Hart flares after Cohle suspects Hart is cheating on Maggie. Reverend Billy Lee Tuttle (Jay O. Sanders), a celebrated evangelist and cousin of the governor, advocates a police task force focusing on "anti-Christian crimes," including the Lange murder. Hart and Cohle's investigation leads them to a remote ranch harboring runaway girls who work there as prostitutes. They find Lange's diary, which contains repeated references to "Carcosa" and a "Yellow King," at the ranch. In the wreckage of a burnt-out church Lange attended, they find a wall painting depicting a human figure wearing deer antlers.

In 2012, Cohle reflects on his daughter's death in a car accident, which led to the collapse of his marriage and his spending four years as an undercover narcotics investigator. His undercover career ended with a lethal gunfight, after which he was hospitalized in a psychiatric institution. After his release, Cohle requested a job in homicide and was partnered with Hart. Cohle reveals that he experiences brief, intermittent episodes of visual hallucinations caused by years of drug use while working as an undercover officer. Shots from 1995 show that Cohle occasionally suffers these hallucinations when he is with Hart, but he does not discuss them. Hart is now divorced from Maggie for reasons unrevealed.

3
3
"The Locked Room"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
January 26, 2014 (2014-01-26)
1.93[3]

1995. Hart and Cohle, after speaking with pastor Joel Theriot, learn that Lange was sometimes seen at church with a tall man with distinctive facial scarring. Their investigation continues in the face of pressure to turn the case over to Tuttle's new task force. Hart enters a jealous rage when he discovers his mistress Lisa (Alexandra Daddario) with another man. While researching old investigations, Cohle identifies symbols similar to the Lange case in the death of Rianne Olivier, which was classified as accidental. Hart and Cohle visit Light of the Way Academy, a religious school run by Tuttle that Olivier attended, but find it abandoned save for a groundskeeper. They discover that Olivier's boyfriend, Reggie Ledoux (Charles Halford) is an ex-con who was a cellmate of Dora Lange's ex-husband, Charlie, and has since skipped parole. The detectives put out an APB on Reggie Ledoux.

2012. The interviews continue, revealing Hart's questionable moral views and Cohle's nihilistic views of humanity.

4
4
"Who Goes There"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
February 9, 2014 (2014-02-09)
1.99[4]

In 1995, Charlie Lange (Brad Carter) says he showed pictures of Dora to Ledoux. Hart tracks down an associate of Ledoux's and forces him to reveal Ledoux's meth operation with the Iron Crusaders, a biker gang out of East Texas. Cohle, who had been a member of the gang while undercover, takes personal leave to infiltrate it, saying he needs to visit his dying father. Lisa reveals the affair to Maggie, who leaves the house with their daughters. Hart confronts Maggie at her workplace; Cohle extricates him from a standoff with security officers. Cohle's contact in the Iron Crusaders, Ginger (Joseph Sikora), promises access to the gang's meth supply in exchange for Cohle's (who is known to the gang as "Crash") help robbing a rival gang. The robbery goes badly, with fatalities on both sides and rising chaos in the rival gang's neighborhood. Cohle is forced to take Ginger prisoner and escape in Hart's car.

In 2012, Hart and Cohle both maintain the story of Cohle's sick father in the face of skeptical questioning by Papania and Gilbough.

5
5
"The Secret Fate of All Life"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
February 16, 2014 (2014-02-16)
2.25[5]

In 1995, Ginger introduces Cohle to DeWall Ledoux, Reggie's cousin and meth-cooking partner. DeWall refuses to do business with Cohle, but unwittingly leads him and Hart to a meth lab hidden in the bayou. Hart apprehends Reggie, who makes cryptic statements about Carcosa. Hart kills Reggie in a rage after discovering two kidnapped and abused children in the compound. DeWall flees but dies after triggering a homemade booby trap. Hart and Cohle plant evidence to make it look as though an intense shootout has taken place, a scenario they report to a police investigation. They are hailed as heroes at the police station and in the press, and they receive commendations and promotions.

By 2002, Hart and Maggie have reconciled and Cohle is dating again. While Cohle is consulting on a police interrogation, the prisoner asks for a plea bargain in exchange for information about Dora Lange's killer, who he claims is still at large and killing. He mentions the "Yellow King," which gets Cohle's attention. The prisoner kills himself in his cell before Cohle can investigate his claims. Cohle returns to Light of the Way Academy, where he finds dozens of twig sculptures and dark imagery on the walls.

In 2012, Papania and Gilbough tell Hart they suspect that Cohle, who they allege conveniently led Hart to every clue or lead in the case, has been orchestrating the killings. Cohle is also a person of interest in Rev. Billy Lee Tuttle's suspicious death two years earlier, which was around the time Cohle returned to Louisiana. Cohle walks out of his interview after the detectives accuse him.

6
6
"Haunted Houses"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
February 23, 2014 (2014-02-23)
2.64[6]

In 2002, Cohle links a series of missing persons to Tuttle-funded schools. A former pastor in Tuttle's ministries claims Tuttle covered up child molestation. Ledoux's surviving victim, now institutionalized with regressive catatonia, tells Cohle about a third attacker—a giant man with scars—and begins screaming when Cohle asks her about the man's face. Tuttle complains to the police department following a tense meeting with Cohle, who has been warned to cease his investigation and is suspended from duty. Hart begins an affair with Beth (Lili Simmons), a former underage prostitute whom he interviewed in 1995 while working on the Lange case. After Maggie discovers the new affair, she manipulates a drunk Cohle and has sex with him, because she knows that Hart would never forgive her for that, and she could get a divorce. After she tells Hart, he and Cohle fight in the police station parking lot. Cohle quits the police force immediately after the fight.

In 2012, Papania and Gilbough interview Maggie, who deflects their questions. Hart walks out of his interview in response to Papania and Gilbough's accusations against Cohle. Cohle seeks out Hart and they agree to meet and talk.

7
7
"After You've Gone"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
March 2, 2014 (2014-03-02)
2.34[7]

In 2012, Cohle presents Hart with evidence of a cult he believes is responsible for the disappearance of dozens of women and children along the coast in Louisiana. Among the evidence is a videotape of the ritualistic rape and murder of Marie Fontenot (the missing-child case they briefly investigated in 1995) by men in costumes and masks, which Cohle stole from a safe in Rev. Tuttle's home. Cohle denies killing Tuttle, speculating that others did it to prevent Tuttle from being blackmailed over the tape. Hart, shaken from watching the videotape, agrees to join the investigation. They learn that Tuttle had an illegitimate half-brother with the surname Childress, whose son had scars on his face. They also learn that their former colleague Steve Geraci (Michael Harney) was ordered by his boss, Ted Childress—then the sheriff of Vermilion Parish—to cut short his investigation of Fontenot's disappearance. Hart and Cohle accost Geraci to coerce the details from him, threatening him if he should try to go to the authorities or have them arrested. Gilbough and Papania ask the groundskeeper Cohle encountered at Light of the Way Academy in 1995 for directions to the burnt-out church. They drive off without noticing the lower part of his face is heavily scarred.

8
8
"Form and Void"
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nic Pizzolatto
March 9, 2014 (2014-03-09)
3.52[8]

In 2012, the "man with the scars" (Glenn Fleshler) is shown living in a large house in squalor with a female relative (Ann Dowd) with whom he has a sexual relationship. He speaks cryptically in multiple accents and keeps his father's decaying corpse in a shed on his property. Later, he goes to work painting a school, where he watches children on the playground. Hart and Cohle extract details from Geraci by showing him the Fontenot tape. Hart thinks the "green-eared spaghetti monster" may have been the scarred man covered in green paint after painting a house in Dora Lange's neighborhood in 1995. They trace the paint job to a small business owned by William Childress that employed a man with scars on his face. They visit William Childress's home—the house where the "man with the scars" lives. Cohle pursues the man, William Childress's son Errol, through a labyrinth of trees and tunnels that Errol identifies as Carcosa. At the end, Cohle discovers an idol draped in yellow and covered in skulls, and, briefly delusional, sees a spiraling vortex. Cohle is then attacked by Errol. Hart discovers William's decaying corpse and runs to Cohle's aid. Hart and Cohle fight Errol; they are both severely wounded, but Cohle manages to kill Errol via a gunshot to the head. Papania and Gilbough are summoned with reinforcements as Hart aids Cohle. While Hart and Cohle recover in hospital, Papania and Gilbough connect Errol to dozens of missing-person cases and murders, including Dora Lange's. The Tuttles escape prosecution, but are disgraced. Hart breaks down in tears when Maggie and their daughters visit him. Cohle reveals that during his ordeal he felt the loving presence of his dead father and daughter, and the experience has given his life renewed purpose. The two detectives reflect on the ongoing universal battle between light and dark.

tag: table

text: Cast[edit]

text: Main cast[edit]

text:
Matthew McConaughey as Detective Rustin "Rust" Cohle
Woody Harrelson as Detective Martin "Marty" Hart
Michelle Monaghan as Maggie Hart
Michael Potts as Detective Maynard Gilbough
Tory Kittles as Detective Thomas Papania

text: Recurring cast[edit]

text:
Kevin Dunn as Major Ken Quesada
Alexandra Daddario as Lisa Tragnetti
Michael Harney as Sheriff Steve Geraci
Elizabeth Reaser as Laurie Perkins
J. D. Evermore as Detective Bobby Lutz
Madison Wolfe as young Audrey Hart

text: Erin Moriarty as teenage Audrey Hart

text: Meghan Wolfe as young Macie Hart

text: Brighton Sharbino as teenage Macie Hart

text:
Don Yesso as Commander Speece
Brad Carter as Charlie Lange
Lili Simmons as Beth
Jay O. Sanders as Billy Lee Tuttle
Shea Whigham as Joel Theriot
Glenn Fleshler as Errol Childress
Charles Halford as Reggie Ledoux
Joseph Sikora as Ginger
Paul Ben-Victor as Major Leroy Salter

text: Production[edit]

text: Conception[edit]

text: Before creating True Detective, Nic Pizzolatto had taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, DePauw University, and the University of Chicago.[9] Inspired by HBO's series The Wire, The Sopranos, and Deadwood,[10] he began working on a short story collection that he later published as Between Here and the Yellow Sea in 2006.[9] He published a novel, Galveston, in 2010, and began trying to write for television. His earlier attempts at television writing were unsuccessful because of a lack of money.[10] Pizzolatto's first major gig in television writing came in 2011, as a screenwriter for AMC's series The Killing. He credits the show with giving him a glimpse of the inner workings of the television industry. Pizzolatto grew increasingly dissatisfied with the series' creative direction, and left two weeks into staff writing sessions for its second season.[9]

text: True Detective was intended to be a novel, but once the project took definite form, Pizzolatto thought the narrative's shifts in time and perspective made it more suitable for television.[9][11] He pitched an adaptation of Galveston, and from May to July 2010 he developed six screenplays, including an early, 90-page draft of the True Detective pilot script.[9][10] Pizzolatto secured a development deal with HBO for a potential pilot series shortly thereafter.[9] He wrote a second True Detective script soon after his departure from The Killing thanks to the support of production company and manager Anonymous Content,[9] which ultimately produced and developed the project in-house.[12] By April 2012, following a heated bidding period, HBO commissioned eight episodes of True Detective.[12] Pizzolatto did not hire a writing staff because he believed a collaborative approach would not work with his isolated, novelistic process, and that a group would not achieve his desired result.[13] After working alone for about three months, the final copy of the project script was 500 pages long.[13][14]

text: Casting and crew[edit]

text: Because the series is an anthology, each season has a self-contained narrative, following a disparate set of characters in various settings.[9] Pizzolatto began contemplating the lead roles while he was pitching the series to networks in early 2012.[9] True Detective's anthology format only required actors to commit to a single season, so Pizzolatto was able to attract film stars who normally avoid television series because of their busy schedules.[13] Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey were among the actors Pizzolatto considered for star billing. McConaughey, who had recently finished filming Killer Joe (2011), was contracted well before HBO commissioned the season.[11] Impressed with his performance in The Lincoln Lawyer (2011), Pizzolatto at first assigned him to play Hart, but McConaughey convinced him to give him the part of Cohle.[15] When asked in a Variety interview about his decision to switch parts, the actor replied, "I wanted to get in that dude's head. The obsession, the island of a man—I'm always looking for a guy who monologues. It's something really important as I feel I'm going into my better work."[16] To prepare for the role, McConaughey created a 450-page analysis—the "Four Stages of Rustin Cohle"—to study his character's evolution during the season.[17]

text: Harrelson was the season's next significant casting choice, brought on to play Hart at McConaughey's request.[18][19] Harrelson stated that he joined True Detective partly because he wanted to work with certain people involved in the project, with whom he had previously collaborated in the 2012 HBO film Game Change.[20] Michelle Monaghan agreed to play the season's female lead, Maggie, because she felt compelled by the direction of the plot and her character's story arc.[21] Michael Potts and Tory Kittles completed the principal cast, playing detectives Maynard Gilbough and Thomas Papania, respectively.[22][23] Major supporting roles in True Detective's first season include Kevin Dunn as Major Ken Quesada, Alexandra Daddario as Lisa Tragnetti, and Brad Carter as Charlie Lange.[22]

text: Pizzolatto narrowed his search for a suitable director to Cary Joji Fukunaga, whom he knew from Anonymous Content, and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Fukunaga was formally appointed as director after Iñárritu pulled out of the project due to film commitments.[24][25] In preparation for his work on the series, Fukunaga spent time with a homicide detective of the Louisiana State Police's Criminal Investigations Division to develop an accurate depiction of a 1990s homicide detective's work.[26] Fukunaga recruited Adam Arkapaw, director of photography of Top of the Lake, as project cinematographer. Arkapaw came to the director's attention for his work in Animal Kingdom (2010) and Snowtown (2011), and was hired after the two negotiated a deal at a meeting in San Francisco.[27] Alex DiGerlando, who Fukunaga had worked with on Benh Zeitlin's Glory at Sea in 2008, was appointed as the production designer. Fukunaga said in an interview, "I knew what Alex accomplished in the swamps of Louisiana and given some money, how much more amazing he could be in building sets that would just be used for one or two days and be abandoned again."[28]

text: Filming[edit]

text: Initially, True Detective's first season was due to shoot in Arkansas, but Pizzolatto later chose to film in Louisiana to take advantage of state tax incentives and the area's distinctive landscape:[29] "There's a contradictory nature to the place and a sort of sinister quality underneath it all ... everything lives under layers of concealment. The woods are thick and dark and impenetrable. On the other hand you have the beauty of it all from a distance."[13] Principal photography took three months (between 100 and 110 days),[28] from January to June 2013.[27] Approximately five minutes of film were shot per day.[27] Production staff constructed various set pieces, among them a scorched chapel, Joel Theriot's tent revival, and the Louisiana State Criminal Investigations Division offices, the last of which they built inside an abandoned light bulb warehouse near Elmwood.[30] For the Dora Lange crime scene, the crew filmed exterior shots at a remote sugarcane field outside Erath which, because it was partially burned, inspired what DiGerlando called a "moody and atmospheric" backdrop for the corresponding interior scenes.[30] The scene in which Cohle, taking Ginger hostage, escapes a housing complex amidst gunfire, was captured in Bridge City as a single six-minute tracking shot, a technique Fukunaga had employed in Sin Nombre (2009) and Jane Eyre (2011).[31][32] Shot in seven takes, preparation for the scene was extensive and demanding: McConaughey trained with Mark Norby to master a fighting style for his character,[31] and the nature of the shoot required a team of stunt coordinators, make-up artists, and special effects crew on hand during its entire course.[32] Elsewhere, shooting took place at the old Kenner High School campus[30] and nineteenth-century Fort Macomb, located outside New Orleans.[33]

text: The filming schedule was not organized in the episode sequence, which made managing the logistics much more challenging.[34] The entire season was shot on 35 mm film,[35] which the production staff chose to achieve a certain texture, as well as a "nostalgic" quality.[27] The season was filmed using a Panavision Millennium XL2 camera, and the choice of lens corresponded to the period when a scene took place. Scenes set in 1995 and 2002 were captured with Panavision PVintage lenses, which produced a softer image because they were made of recycled, low-contrast glass. As these scenes were written as a reflection of Cohle and Hart's memory, production sought to make them as cinematic as possible, to reflect what Arkapaw called "the fragmentation of their lucid imaginations back through their past."[27] To achieve this, they relied on wider lenses to exaggerate composition.[27] The 2012 scenes were shot with Panavision Primo lenses: the visual palette in comparison was sharper and had much more contrast, lending a "modern, crisp feeling" to the images, and, according to Arkapaw, pulling "characters out from their environments to hopefully help audiences get inside their heads."[27]

text: Art design[edit]

text: Joshua Walsh was responsible for creating True Detective's artwork. His work for the show consists of over 100 individual "devil's nests"—twig sculptures created by the killer—along with wall paintings and miniature sculptures of men made of beer cans, among others.[30] According to DiGerlando, Walsh's interests in hunting and taxidermy made him "the perfect dude for the job".[30] A blueprint for the devil's nests was not well established in the script, other than specifications that the structures be able to stand on their own and feature a spiral motif. DiGerlando and Walsh went with a tripod design that showed a spiral when viewed from the base, and contained ladder-like crossing elements that symbolized the killer's desire to ascend to a dark spiritual plane. Each design had subtle differences from one another.[30] DiGerlando cited the work of Henry Darger and James Charles Castle as strong stylistic influences and sought a primitive look for the sculptures, one that revealed the workings of a man with "some deep inner urge to express himself".[30] To reflect this, Walsh built devil's nests using mud, secondhand children's clothing, reeds, roots, and other materials he felt the killer would use.[30]

text: The season's title sequence was a collaboration between director Patrick Clair, his Santa Monica-based studio Elastic, his Sydney-based studio Antibody, and Brisbane-based company Breeder.[36][37] The design team emphasized southern Louisiana's industrial landscape because it reflected the characters' traits and personal, inner struggles. Clair stated that from the start he had an "unusually clear" vision of True Detective's finished opening sequence.[36] Using Richard Misrach's photography book Petrochemical America (2012) as a template, the production team initially photographed the local scenery, and the resulting images were woven together to form the core of the title sequence.[37] By the time production began animating, they faced several problems: the photographic stills were too grainy and the footage was too jagged. As a result, many shots were digitally altered and slowed to about a tenth of their original speed, which, according to Clair, "evoked a surreal and floaty mood that perfectly captured what we were after."[36]

text: Creation of a 3D effect required the design team to use an assortment of low-poly meshes, or 3D geometric models.[36] Using a variety of animation and special effects techniques, these images were later superimposed "with painstaking care" to avoid a sterile, digitized look.[37] Clair said, "The most crucial thing to me was that this didn't feel digital, so we went to great lengths to incorporate as much organic imagery as possible."[37] For some stills, the design team created digital doubles to develop more texture. The sequence's final cut was polished using optical glitching and motion distortion techniques.[36] The Sydney Morning Herald included the opening sequence in a list of ten of the best title sequences on television.[38]

text: Music[edit]

text: Season one's opening theme is "Far from Any Road", an alternative country song originally composed by The Handsome Family for their 2003 album Singing Bones.[37] The True Detective soundtrack features a compilation of gospel and blues music, which were selected by Pizzolatto and T Bone Burnett. The pair opposed the use of Cajun music and swamp blues for the season's musical score because they felt it was overdone.[39] Burnett said the score was intended to be character-driven, rather than inspired by other crime fiction drama.[39] Songs by Bo Diddley, Melvins, Primus, The Staple Singers, Grinderman, Vashti Bunyan, Townes Van Zandt,[40] and Captain Beefheart appear in season one. Burnett also composed original pieces with Rhiannon Giddens, who used a Swarmatron synthesizer, and Cassandra Wilson.[39] HBO released an abridged soundtrack album, featuring 14 tracks from True Detective's first two seasons, on August 14, 2015, through physical media and iTunes.[41]

text: Themes and analysis[edit]

text: Masculinity and depiction of women[edit]

text: Commentators have noted masculinity as a theme in True Detective. Christopher Lirette of Southern Spaces said the show was about "men living in a brutally masculine world" and as such, women are depicted as "things-to-be-saved and erotic obstacles" à la Double Indemnity (1944) and Chinatown (1974).[42] Slate's Willa Paskin said True Detective's depiction of its female characters—as sex workers, the deceased, and "a nagging wife"—seemed to reveal an intent to reflect the protagonists' "blinkered worldview and the very masculine, Southern cop culture they inhabited."[43] Some commentators saw Hart's characterization as a manifestation of this idea, evident through his conventional view of women as virgins and whores, as well as his treatment of Maggie and Audrey.[42][44][45] For example, when Hart confronts the two men who had sex with Audrey, he is in essence "charging other men a price for infringing on the daughter he sees, in a muddled way, as both deserving of protection and badly in need of being controlled."[44]

text: In her piece for Salon, Janet Turley said that the women "become reflections of the men", given that the True Detective universe is seen through the eyes of the show's male leads.[46] Sam Adams of Indiewire contended that the season's central story focused on "the horrible things men do to women", many of which are never reported to or investigated by authorities. Adams wrote, "No one missed Dora Lange. Marie Fontenot disappeared, and the police let a rumor stop them from following up".[47] Furthermore, he said the role of women was more profound because Cohle suffers through his ex-wife and deceased daughter, and Hart is unable to "deal appropriately with the women who are there".[47] According to Scott Wilson, a cultural studies lecturer at Kingston University, women are distinguished into three groups—what he calls "the superegoic, the obscene and the sacred".[48] Maggie, in Wilson's interpretation, is portrayed as the superegoic wife who "constantly makes demands on her guilty husband or partner tying him or her down and deflecting him or her from his symbolic role as police."[48]

text: The philosopher Erin K. Stapleton subscribes to the theory that Dora Lange's corpse serves to "provide the initial territory or orientation through which the communities of True Detective are formed."[49] It is through Dora's corpse that Cohle and Hart's partnership is first clearly articulated;[49] and in addition to their own bond, "the intimate knowledge" of her body is the basis of all of the other relationships in their respective lives.[50] Her narrative thus, by proxy, influences both men's character development as they dive deeper into their investigation.[51]

text: Religion[edit]

text: True Detective explores Christianity and the dichotomy between religion and rationality. Born into a devout Catholic household, Pizzolatto said that as a child he saw religion as storytelling that acts "as an escape from the truth".[52] According to Andrew Romano at The Daily Beast, the season alludes to Pizzolatto's childhood and creates a parallel between Christianity and the supernatural theology of "Carcosa": "Both ... are stories. Stories people tell themselves to escape reality. Stories that 'violate every law of the universe.'"[52] Romano believed this message is not critical of religion per se, rather it shows how the "power of storytelling" and religious zeal "can wind [you] up in some pretty sick places."[52] Jeff Jensen from Entertainment Weekly has opined that the show becomes more self-aware through Cohle's harsh critiques of religion, which he viewed as a vehicle for commentary about pop culture escapism.[53] Stapleton observed that the crimes on True Detective—through its victims and the implications of sacrifice and sexual violence—"respond to the conservative Christianity from which they originate, and seek to exploit the opportunities for the pleasure of transgression such a structure offers."[54]

text: Theorist Edia Connole saw connections to Philip Marlowe and Le Morte d'Arthur's Lancelot in True Detective's presentation of Cohle, all "knights whose duty to their liege lord is tempered with devotion to God."[55] Other aspects of True Detective evoke Christian imagery, including the opening scene, which Connole felt mirrored the crucifixion of Jesus.[56] The author and philosopher Finn Janning argued that Cohle's evolution illustrates an affinity between Buddhism and philosophical pessimism.[57] A self-proclaimed pessimist, Cohle is, however, changed by a near-death experience in the season finale, in which he has an epiphany, seeing death as "pure love": this echoes the Buddhist concept of rigpa.[57]

text: Philosophical pessimism and influences[edit]

text: Critics have offered many readings of the influence of weird and horror fiction on True Detective's narrative, often examining the influence of Robert W. Chambers' short story collection The King in Yellow (1895) and Thomas Ligotti.[58] Allusions to The King in Yellow can be observed in the show's dark philosophy,[59] its recurring use of "Carcosa" and "The Yellow King" as motifs throughout the series, and its symbolic use of yellow as a thematic signature that signifies insanity and decadence.[60] Pizzolatto was accused of plagiarizing Ligotti because of close similarities between lines in True Detective and text from Ligotti's nonfiction book The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (2010)—accusations Pizzolatto denied, while acknowledging Ligotti's influence.[61]

text: Other philosophers and writers identified as influences include Arthur Schopenhauer,[59] Friedrich Nietzsche,[61] Gilles Deleuze,[57] Ray Brassier, Emil Cioran, and Eugene Thacker.[62] Mathijs Peters, in a piece for Film International, argued that True Detective probes Schopenhauerian philosophy through its approach to individuality, self-denial, the battle between dark and light, and so forth.[63] Ben Woodard noted the show's evolving philosophy, which examines a setting where culture, religion, and society are direct by-products of biological weakness. Woodward wrote, "Biological programming gets recuperated and socially redistributed visions, faiths, and acerbic personalities take the reins of uncertain ends creating a world where 'people go away'."[64] Even the setting, Fintan Neylan argued, emphasizes a world "where the decrepitude of human ordering cannot be hidden."[65] He stated, "This is not a place where hope fled; it is a place where hope could never take root. It is with these people and environs that the real horror is sourced."[65] Yet Neylan observed that Cohle's actions are not motivated by misanthropy, rather a drive to challenge "those who try to either disguise or manipulate this frailty of humans for their own benefit."[66] And in doing so, Cohle ultimately confronts "an entire philosophical history which has taken its task as that of sweeping frailty away."[66] Christopher Orr at The Atlantic said True Detective was "Fincherian in the best sense", a fusion of Se7en (1995) and Zodiac (2007), because of its subject matter, sleek cinematography, and "vivid, unsettling" aura.[67]

text: Some commentators noted further influences from comic book literature. Adams likened Cohle to the protagonist of Alan Moore's The Courtyard and drew parallels with Grant Morrison's The Invisibles for the show's brief exploration of M-theory with one of Cohle's monologues.[68] ComicsAlliance and New York columnist Abraham Riesman cited Top 10 as the inspiration for the season finale based on dialogue from the episode's closing scene.[69][70]

text: Auteurism[edit]

text: Another principal topic of discussion among critics has been True Detective's auteurist sensibility. Auteurism (from French auteur) is a critical framework that assesses films or other works of art as reflections of the personal vision of individual authors, typically a director or writer.[71] At the helm of each of the season's episodes are Pizzolatto and Fukunaga—its sole writer and director—a partnership that provides the show a unique place in a traditionally collaborative medium where broad sets of writers and directors work in tandem.[71][72] Colin Robertson at The List saw Twin Peaks as the most notable artistic antecedent to True Detective's first season, seeing that both shows challenge crime drama cliches and "use the genre conventions of a whodunnit-style mystery as a sublimely subversive diving board, and leap off from there to tell a broader story."[72]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Viewership[edit]

text: True Detective debuted to 2.3 million U.S. viewers, becoming HBO's highest rated series premiere since the pilot episode of Boardwalk Empire.[73] Ratings remained steady and peaked at the finale, which drew 3.5 million viewers.[74] Overall, season one averaged 2.33 million viewers,[75] and its average gross audience (which includes DVR recordings, reruns, and HBO Go streaming) totaled 11.9 million viewers per episode, thus becoming HBO's highest rated freshman show since the first season of Six Feet Under 13 years earlier.[76][77]

text: Reviews[edit]

text:
True Detective, coming as it does after what was arguably the best year for dramas in at least five years [...], just puts an exclamation point on the topic of excessive quality.
“
”

– Tim Goodman, The Hollywood Reporter.[78]

text: The American press considered True Detective to be among the best television shows of 2014.[79] Many critics complimented the work of both lead actors,[80][81][82] often singling out McConaughey for further praise,[83][84][85] with his work described as "jaw-droppingly great"[86] and "simply magnetic".[87] Some reviewers singled out simple conversational scenes, often in claustrophobic interiors, as some of the best acting in the series.[82][88][89] The characterization received mixed reviews: Cohle's speeches, described by HuffPost as "mesmerizing monologues",[89] and by Vanity Fair as dense and interesting material,[84] were criticized by the New York Post as "'70s-era psycho-babble" which slowed down the story.[90] Several critics viewed the portrayals of women as stereotypical: "either angry or aroused",[91][92] though Michele Monaghan was praised for her performance in a "thankless role".[91]

text: Pizzolatto and Fukunaga, as sole writer and director of the entire series, were able to exercise much stronger control over the show than is usual for a TV series, which let the show take risks: the pacing, dialogue, and cinematography all departed at times from the expectations for a television drama.[86][93] Pizzolatto's scripts drew occasional criticism as "self-consciously literary" and overwritten,[94][90] and several journalists attributed mistakes in the script to Pizzolatto's inexperience in writing TV drama.[82][85] Despite the criticism, the Daily Telegraph and Uproxx described the season as "ambitious"[95] and "dense with event and meaning".[86] The flashback structure also divided critics: it was described as "impressively seamless",[85] and "a major asset",[96] but the fragmented approach to storytelling was considered a flaw by others.[86][84] Uproxx praised Fukunaga's atmospheric and "hauntingly beautiful" cinematography,[86] and The Boston Globe complimented the "spare, hollow, percussive" soundtrack,[97] with Uproxx crediting the creative control the two men wielded for the quality of the result.[86]

text: The story of two mismatched detectives working on a case was described by several critics as a cliché,[98][92] though many reviewers felt this was made into a strength: The Daily Beast, for example, described the narrative as having "the potential to be revolutionary",[98] and the Grantland reviewer felt that "the form is truly radical and forward-thinking", though they added that "the content is anything but".[91] Emily Nussbaum, writing for The New Yorker, was also critical, considering the real story to be "a simpler tale: one about heroic male outlines and closeups of female asses"; she described the philosophical monologues as "dorm room deep talk" and argued that the show had "fallen for its own sales pitch".[92] Other reviewers were more positive: comments ranged from "as frighteningly nervy and furious in its delivery and intent as prime David Lynch",[99] to "one of the most riveting and provocative series I've ever seen".[98]

text: Accolades[edit]

text: As the nominations for the 66th Primetime Emmy Awards approached, early media reports named True Detective among several potential miniseries candidates, due to a revision made by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences that recognized film and miniseries content as distinct categories.[100] By March 2014, HBO had submitted True Detective as a drama series contender,[101][102][103] an unconventional move given the show's anthology format and fierce competition from the likes of Breaking Bad and House of Cards.[104] HBO's decision was censured by FX president John Landgraf, who remarked to reporters at a press event: "My own personal point of view is that a miniseries is a story that ends, a series is a story that continues. To tell you the truth, I think it's actually unfair for HBO to put True Detective in the drama series category because essentially you can get certain actors to do a closed-ended series – a la Billy Bob Thornton in Fargo or Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in True Detective – who you can't get to sign on for a seven-year [regular drama series] deal."[105] Nevertheless, True Detective emerged as a frontrunner heading into the Primetime Emmy season, and in July 2014, was nominated for twelve awards; its closest rival, Breaking Bad, received sixteen nominations.[106] The series ultimately won five Emmy awards: Outstanding Directing (Fukunaga), Outstanding Casting, Outstanding Main Title Design, Outstanding Make-Up, and Outstanding Cinematography.[107]

text: True Detective was a candidate for a variety of awards, most of which recognized outstanding achievement in direction, cinematography, writing, and acting. It received four Golden Globe nominations, among them for Best Miniseries or Television Film, and a TCA Award for Program of the Year.[108][109] Among the show's wins include a British Academy Television Award (BAFTA) for Best International Programme, a Writers Guild of America Award in the Dramatic Series category, and a Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Drama Series (McConaughey).[110][111][112]

text:
Award
Category
Nominee(s)
Result
Ref.

66th Primetime Emmy Awards
Outstanding Drama Series
True Detective
Nominated
[107]

Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series
Matthew McConaughey
Nominated

Woody Harrelson
Nominated

Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Won

Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series
Nic Pizzolato
Nominated

66th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards
Outstanding Music Composition for a Series
T Bone Burnett
Nominated

Outstanding Casting for a Drama Series
Alexa L. Fogel, Christine Kromer and Meagan Lewis
Won

Outstanding Make-up for a Single-Camera Series (Non-Prosthetic)
Felicity Bowring, Wendy Bell, Ann Pala, Kim Perrodin, Linda Dowds
Won

Outstanding Cinematography for a Single-Camera Series
Adam Arkapaw
Won

Outstanding Main Title Design
Patrick Clair, Raoul Marks, Jennifer Sofio Hall
Won

Outstanding Art Direction for a Contemporary or Fantasy Series
Alex DiGerlando, Mara LePere-Schloop, Tim Beach, Cynthia Slagter
Nominated

Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Drama Series
Affonso Goncalves
Nominated

72nd Golden Globe Awards
Best Miniseries or Television Film
True Detective
Nominated
[108]

Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film
Matthew McConaughey
Nominated

Woody Harrelson
Nominated

Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film
Michelle Monaghan
Nominated

61st British Academy Television Awards
Best International Programme
True Detective
Won
[110]
[113]

30th TCA Awards
Outstanding New Program
True Detective
Nominated
[109]

Program of the Year
Nominated

Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries, and Specials
Won

Individual Achievement in Drama
Matthew McConaughey
Won

4th Critics' Choice Television Awards
Best Drama Series
True Detective
Nominated
[111]

Best Actor in a Drama Series
Matthew McConaughey
Won

19th Satellite Awards
Best Drama Series
True Detective
Nominated
[114]

Best Actor in a Drama Series
Woody Harrelson
Nominated

Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries, or Television Film
Michelle Monaghan
Nominated

21st Screen Actors Guild Awards
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama Series
Matthew McConaughey
Nominated
[115]

Woody Harrelson
Nominated

67th Writers Guild of America Awards
Dramatic Series
Nic Pizzolato
Won
[112]

New Series
Won

67th Directors Guild of America Awards
Drama Series
Cary Joji Fukunaga
Nominated
[116]

2nd Location Managers Guild Awards
Outstanding Locations in a Contemporary Television Series
Batou Chandler
Won
[117]

text: Home media[edit]

text: On June 10, 2014, HBO Home Entertainment released the first season of True Detective on DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats. In addition to the eight episodes, both formats contain bonus content including interviews with McConaughey and Harrelson, Pizzolatto, and composer Burnett on the show's development, "Inside the Episode" featurettes, two audio commentaries, and deleted scenes from the season.[118] During its first week of sale in the United States, True Detective was the number two selling TV show on DVD and Blu-ray Disc, selling 65,208 copies.[119]


document_title: Skin of my teeth

question_text: where did by the skin of your teeth come from

text: Skin of my teeth

text: Skin of my teeth (Hebrew: ע֣וֹר שִׁנָּֽי ‘ō-wr šin-nāy) is a phrase from the Bible. In Job 19:20, the King James Version of the Bible says, "My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth." In the Geneva Bible, the phrase is rendered as "I have escaped with the skinne of my tethe."[1]

text: In modern times, "by the skin of my teeth" is used to describe a situation from which one barely managed to escape.

text: Cultural references to the phrase[edit]

text:
Skin o' My Teeth—Megadeth used this phrase as a song name in their 1992 album, Countdown to Extinction, referring to the theme of a failed suicide attempt.
The Skin of Our Teeth—A play by Thornton Wilder with multiple Biblical allusions.
Skin o' My Tooth—A book by Baroness Emma Orczy in which the phrase is a nickname of the main character, a lawyer. The nickname is given by a client who says that he was freed "by the skin o' my tooth."


document_title: Film studio

question_text: who built the first film studio in us

question_tokens: who built the first film studio in us

text: Film studio

text: Beginnings[edit]

text: In 1893, Thomas Edison built the first movie studio in the United States when he constructed the Black Maria, a tarpaper-covered structure near his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, and asked circus, vaudeville, and dramatic actors to perform for the camera. He distributed these movies at vaudeville theaters, penny arcades, wax museums, and fairgrounds. The pioneering Thanhouser film studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser. The company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, successfully distributing them around the world. The first film serial ever, The Million Dollar Mystery, was released by the Thanhouser company in 1914.

text: In the early 1900s, companies started moving to Los Angeles, California. Although electric lights were by then widely available, none were yet powerful enough to adequately expose film; the best source of illumination for motion picture production was natural sunlight. Some movies were shot on the roofs of buildings in Downtown Los Angeles. Early movie producers also relocated to Southern California to escape Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, which controlled almost all the patents relevant to movie production at the time.

text: The first movie studio in the Hollywood area was Nestor Studios, opened in 1911 by Al Christie for David Horsley. In the same year, another 15 independents settled in Hollywood. Other production companies eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in places such as Culver City, Burbank, and what would soon become known as Studio City in the San Fernando Valley.

text: The "majors"[edit]

text: The Big 5

text: By the mid-1920s, the evolution of a handful of American production companies into wealthy motion picture industry conglomerates that owned their own studios, distribution divisions, and theaters, and contracted with performers and other filmmaking personnel, led to the sometimes confusing equation of "studio" with "production company" in industry slang. Five large companies, 20th Century Fox, RKO Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer came to be known as the "Big Five," the "majors," or "the Studios" in trade publications such as Variety, and their management structures and practices collectively came to be known as the "studio system."

text: The Little 3

text: Although they owned few or no theaters to guarantee sales of their films, Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists also fell under these rubrics, making a total of eight generally recognized "major studios". United Artists, although its controlling partners owned not one but two production studios during the Golden Age, had an often-tenuous hold on the title of "major" and operated mainly as a backer and distributor of independently produced films.

text: The minors[edit]

text: Smaller studios operated simultaneously with "the majors." These included operations such as Republic Pictures, active from 1935, which produced films that occasionally matched the scale and ambition of the larger studio, and Monogram Pictures, which specialized in series and genre releases. Together with smaller outfits such as PRC TKO and Grand National, the minor studios filled the demand for B movies and are sometimes collectively referred to as Poverty Row.

text: The independents[edit]

text: The Big Five's ownership of movie theaters was eventually opposed by eight independent producers, including Samuel Goldwyn, David O. Selznick, Walt Disney, Hal Roach, and Walter Wanger. In 1948, the federal government won a case against Paramount in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the vertically integrated structure of the movie industry constituted an illegal monopoly. This decision, reached after twelve years of litigation, hastened the end of the studio system and Hollywood's "Golden Age".

text: Typical major film studio components[edit]

text: By the 1950s, the physical components of a typical major film studio had become standardized. Since then, a major film studio has usually been housed inside a physically secure compound with a high wall, which protects filmmaking operations from unwanted interference from paparazzi and crazed fans of leading movie stars. Movement in and out of the studio is normally limited to specific gates (often capped with grand decorative arches), where visitors must stop at a boom barrier and explain the purpose of their visit to a security guard. Studio premises generally feature multiple sound stages along with an outside backlot, as well as offices for studio executives and production companies. There is normally a studio "commissary", which is the traditional term in the film industry for what other industries call a company cafeteria. Early nitrate film was notoriously flammable, and sets were and are still very flammable, which is why film studios built in the early-to-mid 20th century have water towers to facilitate firefighting.

text: Film to television[edit]

text: Halfway through the 1950s, with television proving to be a lucrative enterprise not destined to disappear any time soon—as many in the film industry had once hoped—movie studios were increasingly being used to produce programming for the burgeoning medium. Some midsize film companies, such as Republic Pictures, eventually sold their studios to TV production concerns, which were eventually bought by larger studios, such as the American Broadcasting Company which was purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 1996.

text: Today[edit]

text: With the growing diversification of studios into such fields as video games, television, theme parks, home video and publishing, they have become multi-national corporations. As the studios increased in size they began to rely on production companies, like J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions, to handle many of the creative and physical production details of their feature films. Instead the studios transformed into financing and distribution entities for the films made by their affiliated production companies. With the decreasing cost of CG and visual effects, many studios sold large chunks of their once massive studio spaces or backlots to private real-estate developers. Century City in Los Angeles was once part of the 20th Century Fox backlot, which was among the largest and most famous of the studio lots. In most cases portions of the backlots were retained and are available for rental by various film and television productions. Some studios offer tours of their backlots, while Universal Pictures allows visitors to its adjacent Universal Studios Hollywood theme park to take a tram tour of the backlot where films such as Psycho and Back to the Future were once shot.

text: Independent film and the studios[edit]

text: In the 1980s and 90s, as the cost of professional 16mm film equipment decreased, along with the emergence of non-film innovations such as S-VHS and Mini-DV cameras, many young filmmakers began to make films outside the "studio system". Filmmakers such as Jim Jarmusch, Robert Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Richard Linklater made films that pushed boundaries in ways the studios were then reluctant to do. In response to these films, many distributed by "mini-studios" like Miramax, the "majors" created their own in-house mini-studios meant to focus on edgier "independent" content. Focus Features was created by Universal Pictures and Fox Searchlight was created by 20th Century Fox for this purpose.

text: Notable film studios[edit]

text: This section contains embedded lists that may be poorly defined, unverified or indiscriminate. Please help to clean it up to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Where appropriate, incorporate items into the main body of the article. (June 2017)

text:
1492 Pictures (USA)
A24 (USA)
Amblin Entertainment (USA)

DreamWorks (USA)

Annapurna Studios (Hyderabad, India)
Ardmore Studios (Ireland)
Atlas Entertainment (USA)
Atlas Studios (Morocco)
AVM Productions (Chennai, India)
Babelsberg Studio (Germany)
Barrandov Studios (Czech Republic)
Bavaria Film (Germany)
BBC Films (UK)
Belarusfilm (Belarus)
Bigfoot Entertainment (USA, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong)
Biograph Studios (USA)
Black Bear Pictures (USA)
Bleecker Street (USA)
The Bridge Studios (British Columbia, Canada)
Broad Green Pictures (USA)
CBS Films (USA)
Christie Film Company (USA)
Ciby 2000 (Canada, Norway, UK)
Cinecittà (Italy)
Cinema City International (Hong Kong)
Constantin Film (Germany)
Crystal Sky Pictures (USA)
Dovzhenko Film Studios (Ukraine)
Edison Studios (USA)

Edison's Black Maria (USA)

Elstree Studios (UK)
Entertainment One (Canada)
Eros Entertainment (India)
Filmation (USA)
Fireworks Entertainment (USA & Cuba)
Five & Two Pictures (USA)
Freestyle Releasing (USA)
Full Moon Features (USA)

Moonbeam Entertainment (USA)

Gaumont Film Company (France)
Gener8Xion Entertainment (USA)
Genius Products (USA, Australia & UK)

GoodTimes Entertainment (USA)

Globo Filmes (Brazil)
Gorky Film Studio (Russia)
Grassroots Films (USA)
Hengdian World Studios (China)
ITC Entertainment (UK)

Rank Organisation (UK)

Jerry Bruckheimer Films (USA)
Kadokawa Pictures (Japan)

Daiei Film (Japan)

Kanteerava Studios (Bangalore, (India)
KDK Factory (USA)
Korda Studios (Hungary)
Legendary Pictures (USA)
Lenfilm (Russia)
Lionsgate (USA, Canada)

Anchor Bay Entertainment (USA)
Artisan Entertainment (USA)
Mandalay Pictures (USA)
Mandate Pictures (USA)
Overture Films (USA)
Roadside Attractions (USA)
Summit Entertainment (USA)

Lubin Studios (USA)
LVN Pictures (Philippines)
Marwah Films & Video Studios (New Delhi, India)
Media Asia Entertainment Group (Hong Kong)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (USA)

Cannon Films (USA)
Goldwyn Pictures (USA)
Orion Pictures (USA)

Hemdale Film Corporation (USA)

Solax Studios (USA)
Tiffany Pictures (USA)
United Artists (USA)

Miramax Films (USA, formely part of Walt Disney Pictures)

Dimension Films (USA)
The Weinstein Company (USA)

Moldova-Film (Moldova)
Mosfilm (Soviet Union [now Russia])
National Film Board of Canada (Canada)
Nerigan Entertainment (New Zealand & Russia)
Nikkatsu (Japan)
Nordisk Film (Denmark)
Nu Boyana Film (Bulgaria)
Open Road Films (USA)
Orange Sky Golden Harvest (Hong Kong)
Pacific Data Images (USA)
Padmalaya Studios (Hyderabad, India)
Pantelion Films (USA)
Paramount Pictures (USA)

Famous Players Film Company (USA)
Keystone Studios (USA)
Republic Pictures (USA)
Triangle Film Corporation (USA)

Pathé (France)
Pinewood Studios (UK)

Shepperton Studios (UK)

Possibility Pictures (USA)
Praise Pictures (USA)
Premium Picture Productions (USA)
Pure Flix Entertainment (USA)
Ramanaidu Studios (Hyderabad, India)
Ramoji Film City (Hyderabad, India)
Relativity Media (USA)
Reliance Entertainment (USA & India)
Revolution Studios (USA)
River Road Entertainment (USA)
RKO Pictures (USA)
Rok Studios (Nigeria)
Russian World Studios (Russia)
Sanrio (Japan & USA)
Se-ma-for (Poland)
Selig Polyscope Company (USA)
Shanghai Film Group Corporation (China)
Shaw Brothers Studio (Hong Kong, China)
Sherwood Pictures (USA)
Shochiku (Japan)
Sidney Kimmel Entertainment (USA)
Silver Pictures (USA)
Somali Film Agency (Somalia)
Sonar Entertainment (USA)
Sony Pictures Entertainment (USA & Japan)

Columbia Pictures (USA)
Screen Gems (USA)
TriStar Pictures (USA)

Soyuzmultfilm (Russia)
Spiderwood Studios (USA)
Spyglass Entertainment (USA)
Stark Productions (Canada)
Studio Ghibli (Japan)
StudioCanal (France)

Carolco (USA)

STX Entertainment (USA)
AB Svensk Filmindustri (Sweden)
Sverdlovsk Film Studio (Russia)
The Montecito Picture Company (USA)
Three Mills Studios (UK)
Tinapa Studios (Nigeria)
Toei (Japan)
Toho (Japan)
Tohokushinsha Film (Japan)
Troma Entertainment (USA)
Troublemaker Studios (USA)
Twickenham Film Studios (UK)
Universal Studios (USA)

Focus Features (USA)
Illumination Entertainment (USA)
Nestor Studios (USA)
Victor Studios (USA)
Working Title Films (USA)

Viva Films (Philippines)

Sampaguita Pictures (Philippines)

Village Roadshow (USA & Australia)

Village Roadshow Pictures (Australia)

Walden Media (USA)
Walt Disney Pictures (USA)

20th Century Fox (USA)
Blue Sky Studios (USA)
Caravan Pictures (USA, merged with Spyglass Entertainment)
Fox Atomic (USA)
Fox Searchlight Pictures (USA)
Fox Star Studios (India)
Hollywood Pictures (USA)
Lucasfilm (USA)
Marvel Studios (USA)
New World Pictures (USA)
Pixar (USA)
Regency Enterprises (USA)
Touchstone Pictures (USA)

Warner Bros. (USA)

Castle Rock Entertainment (USA & Canada)
Essanay Studios (USA)
First National Pictures (USA)
MediaPro Pictures (Romania)
Metropolitan Pictures (Romania)
New Line Cinema (USA)

FBO (USA)

Mutual Film (USA)

Thanhouser Company (USA)

Vitagraph Studios (USA)

Kalem Company (USA)
Méliès Films (France)

Wimbledon Studios (UK)
WingNut Films (New Zealand & USA)
World Wide Pictures (USA)
Vishesh Films (India)
Yash Raj Films (India)