Why was it called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre not The Wisconsin Massacre?

Answer 1

Because The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is not based on a true story; it's fiction. Ed Gein is NOT The Texas Chainsaw Massacre killer. He's just the guy who gave the moviemakers the idea for the Leatherface character.

Just because a writer gets an idea for a movie or book from real life, doesn't mean that movie/book is "based on a true story."

All writers get their ideas from real life. Occasionally, a great idea will just come to you, seemingly from out of the blue, and you honestly have no idea where it came from. But for the most part, writers don't come up with ideas from nothing. They get their ideas from things they see and experience in the real world, be it personal experiences, or newspaper stories.

For example, say you read a story in the newspaper about a notorious female drug dealer in New York City. This gives you the idea for a character named Stella Banx, a tough and powerful woman who, at the age of 55, is slowly dying of syphilis. With the Mayor's approval, she runs the most lucrative brothel in all of 19th century New Orleans, with the help of her two murderous yet loyal daughters, Kit and Marie.

Now, wouldn't it be silly to say that the story of Stella Banx is "based on a true story?" The real life story and the fictional story are nothing alike! Stella Banx isn't a drug dealer, she doesn't live in the 21st century, she doesn't live in New York City, she has two daughters, she's friends with the Mayor, she has syphilis...

When a movie/book is "based on a true story," it means that the author/moviemakers strived to make the movie/book as close to the truth as possible. No such attempt was made with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The moviemakers never made any effort to accurately portray the Ed Gein story. Instead, they just took a few teeny-tiny grains of truth, and everything else is fictional.

The only similarities between the Ed Gein case and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre are that Ed Gein wore the skin of his victims like clothing, decapitated and gutted them and hung them up in his house, and may possibly have eaten some of their remains.

Ed Gein did not live in Texas, he did not belong to a family of killers, he did not murder his victims with a chainsaw, and he never stalked a bunch of teenagers that were passing by his house!

Again, just because the author/moviemaker got an idea from real life, doesn't mean the book/movie is based on a true story!

Just to name a few examples out of a million, many of Jane Austen's characters were based, at least in part, on herself or people she knew. But that doesn't mean Pride and Prejudiceis based on a true story.

Nearly all of Stephen King's main characters (the male ones, anyway) are pretty much self-portraits. They're all variations of himself. But that doesn't mean Stephen King's novels are based on true stories, either!

Additionally, Stephen King got the idea for Ellen Rimbauer and the Rose Red mansion from Sarah Winchester and the Winchester Mansion. But Ellen Rimbauer and Rose Red are still fiction: for one thing, no one has ever died or gone missing in the Winchester Mansion. And the life of Sarah Winchester was absolutely nothing like the life of the fictional Ellen Rimbauer.

The idea for the Freddy Krueger character came from a creepy vagrant who frightened writer/director Wes Craven when he was a child. The man wore a hat and sweater similar to Freddy's. But that doesn't mean the Nightmare on Elm Street movies are based on a true story!

And the plot of nearly every Law & Order episode comes from newspaper stories of real-life crimes. But they still can legitimately put the disclaimer that, "the events in this story are fictional and do not depict any real person or event," at the beginning of each episode, because they change so many of the facts that it becomes fiction.

And finally, both The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho were also inspired by the Ed Gein murders. But nobody ever tries to call The Silence of the Lambs or Psycho"based on a true story." The amount of truth in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs and Psycho is the same: almost none.

I repeat: Ed Gein is NOT the Texas Chainsaw Massacre killer. He's just the guy who inspired the character Leatherface.

Saying that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is based on a true story, because they got the idea from Ed Gein, is like saying that A Nightmare on Elm Street is based on a true story, because Wes Craven got the idea for Freddy from that homeless guy who scared him so many years ago.

I really cannot stress this enough: ALL writers get their ideas from real life. A movie/book is only "based on a true story" when the writer tries to depict the truth as accurately as possible. If the author just uses something in real life as inspiration, but the book/movie they produce is totally different from what really happened...then it's not based on a true story.

In other words, a movie/book is not automatically "based on a true story" just because one or two things are similar to something that really happened.

If we say that a movie/book is "based on a true story" just because the author/moviemaker got the idea from something in real life, then we are basically saying that every movie/book is based on a true story.