From here: http://www.avclub.com/articles/tobe-hooper,13680/
O: What do you think of the current debate over violent entertainment?
TH: [Pauses.] Let me see if I can put this correctly. It’s
messing with the First Amendment, it seems. It’s troublesome in that
way, and because there’s a problem with messing with the continuity of
the national psyche. It’s difficult any time you mess with the tribal
consciousness, the expectations of the country’s psyche. It seems like
censorship in a way that is not productive, constructive, or helpful.
O: There’s a quote from the documentary where someone said of
the early ’70s that all that bad karma had to go somewhere, and that
it’s better to channel it into films than into other places.
TH: It really is.
O: I think if you lose that means of expression for violent
thoughts and the darker sentiments of human existence, you’re in
trouble.
TH: It’s both a catharsis and a safe darkness. When I was
shooting in the ’60s, making documentaries for the end of the Kennedy
Title 3 Advanced Educational Programming, I saw things like effigies of
one’s boss that the employees could take it out on at lunch break and
have a release. I think there are potential problems with restricting
what anybody can see. It is, after all, a safe darkness and a place for a
certain kind of release.