Show biz is a famously stoner-friendly industry, but this is taking it to a new level: Actor John Larroquette says he accepted payment for narrating 1974 horror classic Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the form of nugs.
In a recent interview for Parade magazine, the actor was asked about rumors that he had been compensated in cannabis.
“Totally true,” Larroquette told reporter Mara Reinstein. “He gave me some marijuana or a matchbox or whatever you called it in those days. I walked out of the studio and patted him on his back side and said, ‘Good luck to you!’”
The movie was Larroquette’s first feature film, and came before his star turn in the hit 1984-1992 television series Night Court. The cannabis Chainshaw bombshell was dropped amid the press cycle for the recently-debuted remake of Night Court, in which the actor returns as narcissistic assistant district attorney Dan Fielding.
But at the time of the start of this stoner dream of a film debut — which took place in the summer of 1969 — Larroquette told Parade he was gigging in a Colorado resort town bar. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life,” he said. He made the acquaintance of Chainshaw director Tobe Hooper, who would later help take care of that lack of mission.
Four years later, Hooper found Larroquette, then a struggling actor, and offered him an hour-long narration gig.
“I said, ‘Fine!’” remembered Larroquette. “It was a favor.”
No word on how many nugs Larroquette pocketed to voice one of the most infamous slasher flicks, though.
The original Texas Chainshaw Massacre, which Rotten Tomatoes calls, “a classic in low-budget exploitation cinema,” starred Marilyn Burns and Paul A. Partain, and follows a group of outcast friends who are set upon by a crew of bloodthirsty psychos led by Leatherface, a ghoul who dons masks made of the faces of previous victims. The movie was made on a shoestring budget, but it became a cult classic. Larroquette returned to narrate the 2022 sequel, which received slightly less kind reviews (audiences assessed it at 25% on Rotten Tomatoes, for example.)
Larroquette did say that he was compensated for his work in actual money for subsequent installations in the bloody franchise. There have been nine Chainshaw Massacre films so far, though the actor has featured in only the original, 2003 remake, 2006 prequel, and 2022 sequel.
Though subsequent editions were not received as kindly as the first, Larroquette may not have his own critical assessment of the franchise to which his need for weed helped lead him. He told Parade that he isn’t a fan of scary movies, and has never seen the films. That’s a shame: Horror flicks can be a fabulous pick when you’re stoned out of your mind.
