Bill Moseley

I had the extreme honor to sit down and talk to the legendary Bill Moseley at Horrorhound Weekend Indianapolis March 2008.

Bill Moseley is best known for his roles as Choptop in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and Otis B. Driftwood in Rob Zombie's House Of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects. Aside from those great films Bill Moseley has been in a number of other great films as well as numerous films still in production. He was also a member of the musical duo Cornbugs with Buckethead.

You can check out Bill Moseley and his works over at Choptop's BBQ and his official Myspace page.

1. Can you tell us about the iconic role of Choptop and how you came about getting the role?

Yeah, I did a short film called “The Texas Chainsaw Manicure” back in '84 maybe. It was just kind of a fun little fanboy film. I played the part of the hitch hiker and just did the little cameo. I was working for a science fiction magazine called Omni and I went out to California from my home in New York City to cover the making of “2010 A Space Odyssey” sequel and the people I was staying with, a friend of mine from school had an office right down the hall from Tobe Hooper at the time. I brought out The Chainsaw Manicure just to show my friend and he said would you like me to walk it in to Tobe? I said sure. He did and Tobe watched this and loved my cameo as the hitch hiker, again it was only about a five minute movie. My friend gave me Tobe's number and I called him up and Tobe said “Hey I loved that Manicure Bill, who played the hitch hiker?” I said “That was me.” He said “Well if I ever do a sequel I'll keep you in mind.” Two years later he did the sequel, he did keep me in mind and I ended up getting the part of Choptop, never auditioned, just got it on the basis of The Chainsaw Manicure.

2. You seem to be a staple in Rob Zombie's films, how did you come about working with Rob?

I met Rob in October of '99 at a little horror awards show at Universal City Walk in Burbank California, I was the emcee at the show, it was called the Eyegore Awards. I came as Choptop in a tuxedo and emceed the show and Rob was one of the award recipients. I introduced him and gave him his little statue. He realized it was the real Choptop and freaked out and I talked to him a little bit after the show. About less than a month later his manager Andy Gould called up and said “Rob has just had his horror script green lighted by Universal, would you like to be in it?” I said “Fuck yeah.” and that started our happy relationship.

3. What do you do to prepare for your roles, like how do you get into character for a role like Otis or Choptop?

You know really what I do is I just read the script a bunch of times and just sit with it and let my imagination fill in the blanks. I don't really do any kind of method, preparation or anything kind of weird.

4. You have a band named “Cornbugs”, can you tell us a little bit about the band like how you got started?

I got started because I met a guy named Buckethead and he was a big fan of my character Choptop from Texas Chainsaw 2. Choptop is also what attracted Rob Zombie to me so Choptop has really been an amazing fountain of wealth, riches, fame, and fortune thanks to a hippie with a haircut, a guy with a plate in his head, an awkward stumbling vet who has a taste for human flesh. Buckethead was a big fan of Choptop so he wanted to get together and he wanted me to do Choptop on some of his music. So we got together in Santa Monica California back in maybe '90. We actually worked well together. I'm very good at improvising and pretty quick with my mouth and Buckethead was pretty great with a guitar and so we started from there. I was just starting to go to horror conventions and so I asked Buckethead if we could make some music together I could sell at conventions because I was trying to think outside the box. I had 8x10s but I wanted to sell more cool shit for the fans and so he said sure and we got together and cranked out a bunch of tunes and had such a good time doing it that we ended up getting together a bunch more times. Buckethead came up with the name “Cornbugs” and by now we have 5 CDs and 2 DVDs. We both kind of parted ways so we're not doing Cornbugs anymore, sadly enough, but we leave it as a great legacy. There was never a second take on any Cornbugs song, they were always made up on the spot. We got good at that.

5. Who are some of your influences both musical and non-musical?

Certainly my influence for Choptop was Ed Neil who did the hitch hiker in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I also, band wise I love Captain Beefheart, but I'm also a rocker so I love Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors. Acting wise I love Samuel Jackson and Joseph Cotton.

6. Tell us about your new film “Dead Air” released by Antibody Films.

Yes I just finished shooting last week. We started shooting March 31st of 2007, shot for 10 days and had about a year's hiatus and then finished up this past week. I play kind of a shock jock, very glib, politically incorrect radio talk show host with a call in format. I'm on the air when someone calls in and talks about an explosion at a near by sports arena and calls start coming in about these crazy people, it's kind of like they turn in to zombies and they're tearing each other apart and that is the basis of the story. It turns out that it was some kind of a bio-weapon planted by terrorists. They are kind of like the enraged or whatever they were from 28 Days Later. So there's terrorists, there's a lot of political commentary, there's zombies, people getting torn apart, it's a lot of fun. Corbin Bernsen who was in the TV show LA Law is the director. It should be cool. I think it'll probably come out sometime in winter.

7. Any other upcoming projects you'd like to tell us about?

Yes, Repo The Genetic Opera directed by Darren Bousman who directed Saw 2, 3, and 4. It's a horror opera, it's all sung. It stars Sarah Brightman from broadway's Phantom Of The Opera, Paul Sorvino, Mira Sorvino's dad who was in Good Fellas and who is an opera tenor, Ogre from the band Skinny Puppy, Anthony Head who plays Giles on the Buffy The Vampire Slayer series, Alexa Vega the sister from Spy Kids, and Paris Hilton. It is a blood letting futuristic opera; opera meaning every word is sung as opposed to a musical which is songs connected by dialog. It's a Lionsgate film. One of these days it's going to come out, I think they're a little nervous about it, I don't think they know what to do with it so it doesn't really have a release date.

8. Since we deal with comics as well as horror, what are some of your favorite comic books as well as horror films?

I'm kind of old school so I would have to say J'onn J'onzz Manhunter From Mars, Sgt. Rock. Any old Marvel Comics that Steve Ditko did the art for, like old Spider Man and Tales To Astonish.

9. Anything else you want to tell your fans out there reading this?

Just to buy a lot of your magazines, to support horror and to LICK MY PLATE YOU DOG DICKS!!!

--Interview by Shaun May