TI
  WEST

As part of a major east coast independent horror film movement, Ti West has emerged as a leading voice in horror auteurs, and with THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, he has solidied his status as one to keep your eye on.

The prolific writer/director, just shy of 30 years old, first gained notice with his feature debut in THE ROOST, a tale of the undead wrecking havoc on a group of young people stranded in a farm. He followed it up with TRIGGER MAN, an extreme low budget thriller about a trio of hunters who fall victim to a deadly sniper.

Now West returns to his horror roots in THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, a tribute to 1980s early horror films that dealt with devil worship. Mixing a cast of newcomers with genre veterans, THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL is currently on Video on Demand and coming soon to theaters courtesy of Magnolia Pictures.

To promote THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, West met up with the Crypt in New York City to discuss making the film, his love of horror, and the direction he hopes the genre will go in this Crypt exclusive.

COLONEL’S CRYPT: Where did you get the inspiration to make THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL?

TI WEST: The inspiration for the movie came out of the intrigue of the “Satanic Panic” of the early 1980s. I haven’t seen a movie like that in a while and it was just in my head. I had always wanted to do something like that so that’s where it first started. Then I wrote it right when I got out of college so I was broke and I liked the idea of the real life struggles of someone. I mean they’re not digging ditches but they have these issues that are real problems regardless. Being down and trying to better your situation which leads to falling into the “Satanic Panic” was where the idea formulated. As far as the style of the film, I think that one, it’s what my style is which is an old fashioned style, and two, it’s not necessarily a reaction to stuff nowadays. I just don’t have an interest in the stuff nowadays. Of all the horror movies I see a year, I can’t even say there’s a handful I like. There’s only a couple I like. You can do so much with the horror genre and people don’t hardly do anything. They stay in the same section over and over again. To me, what makes horror successful from an audience standpoint is the contrast between when things are horrific and scary and when things are accurate depictions of real life because that makes it relatable. I think contrast is a necessity to make art accessible. You have to be able to see both sides of things otherwise you can’t form a clear opinion on it so it becomes titillation and that to me is not very effective.

CC: Do you think the fact that the film has a slow build and that it takes time to get to know the characters is why the film is being so revered in the horror community?

TW: I would say that in many cases while it’s been revered it’s also been completely bashed which makes it really polarizing. However, I think that’s good. I think polarizing is a sign that you’ve done something right. I think the reviews of this movie are either “Here’s why the movie is so great” and “These things are really important” or “This is the biggest piece of shit that I’ve ever seen.” Those are the only two options. There’s not a “Well, it’s OK” because it’s hard to form an opinion, you know what I mean? It’s like either “I hated everything about it because it’s everything that I’m not used to seeing and it’s everything that I don’t like” or “It’s everything that I do like.”

CC: You’ve worked closely with Larry Fessenden and Glass Eye Pix on most of your films. Explain how it is working with such a tight knit group that really is at the forefront of independent horror.

TW: It would be great if Larry was in a position the same way like Lionsgate is and that he can make these big movies. because I think Larry and Glass Eye Pix are great. People I don’t think are going to fully appreciate how important that it is because it’s on a small, low fi scale but he really is striving to do something really great and really proactive, which is, as he calls them, B movies with A ideas or art horror movies. They are low budget horror movies that are challenging. They are made by auteurish people. For someone like me, I’ve never been in a more comfortable environment and never been in an environment with a group of people I want to make films with. It’s not like that anywhere else. Nothing at all and partially that has to do with Larry’s personality. It’s one of those things where you hear people talking about certain things in the past and it’s like “Oh you weren’t there so you don’t get it,” and I really feel that way with what Glass Eye Pix does. 

CC: You’ve made four feature films thus far?

TW: Three and a half.

CC: OK, I’m not going to get into the half.

TW: That’s fine. (Laughs)

CC: You’ve worked with the same people on the other three films you have done in the Glass Eye Pix crew, namely with Graham Reznick. Does it get easier to work with them as you’ve gone from project to project where you know each other so well it makes production go by smoothly and you can just tell them to “do it?”

TW: It’s not just “do it.” It’s more like “Here’s what I want to do. Now let’s do it together very effectively” because we work very well together and that’s why we all work together. That’s the other thing with these movies with Glass Eye Pix. They’re not compartmentalized films. It’s not handed off to someone just because they know how to do that one thing. We all have similar sensibilities. Graham Reznick and I have known each other since we were like six years old. We’ve worked on everything together. To me sound is a huge part of the narrative and a huge part of the film experience. I work really hard with Graham on sound design and Graham is incredibly talented not only as a sound designer but as a filmmaker himself so it’s not like you go into some sound studio where once you walk in some guy you’ve never met comes up to you and says “Hi, my name is Bill” and he puts in some footsteps and turns to you going “See, it works!” It’s so much more than that and Graham understands that. Graham and I can sit down and argue and bicker. I think I push him to do the best stuff he does and I know he pushes me to come up with things that I wouldn’t see normally. That is what makes it effective is that we all know each other well, from Glenn McQuaid with the title effects to Jeff Grace with the score, we push each other and I think we grow together. That’s also why I think each movie that we’re making, we are getting progressively better because we are better at working together. It’s great to work with your friends. Filmmaking is such a traumatic experience enough that to work with people you don’t like, life is really too short for that.

CC: How did you decide on casting Jocelin for the lead role of Samantha? 

TW: Jocelin’s great, she’s really great. She’ll probably go off and leave us all behind (laughs). She’s the only person I truly cast in the movie from an audition process. She came in on the first day. I saw her tape and I had her come back and met her. I kept making her come back over and over again. I wanted to see a lot of people because this is a movie where the actor has to carry the entire movie themselves which is really difficult and at one point gets out of my control. I remember when I finally did cast her I did tell her “It’s your movie now so don’t fuck it up.” She was laughing but I told her again that “I’ll do what I can but you carry the movie. This movie lives or dies by your ability to do that.” Of course she had never done something like that before and some people don’t understand when they see it because they’ll say “She’s just walking around the house” but that is hard. Memorizing lines is not hard. Delivering them convincingly, very difficult. Having screen presence, very difficult because it’s something that’s built into you. Being able to this behaviorism, it’s not just walking into a room and turning the light on. It’s something that you have to be able to do and she just has that. She just came in on a standard audition and we kept bringing her back. I made sure that she would be cool with all the shit that we were going to put her through and she was a real trouper.

CC: How many days did you shoot THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL?

TW: Eighteen. We scheduled it for twenty five but we finished in eighteen not because we finished early but because of budgetary reasons. 25 becomes 24 which becomes 18 so you have to work with what you can afford.

CC: In addition to your cast, the house itself is such a huge character in the film itself. How did you get the house and where did you film because it looks so great?

TW: A lot of work. The house in real life does not look so great. There’s a lot of movie magic in there. The house on the outside, we didn’t change anything, but the house wasn’t secluded. There were neighbors on both sides of us so if you saw it during the day you would think to yourself “We can’t shoot here” which is why it took so long for us to agree upon it because I felt there would have to be such an extra effort put in to making sure it would look secluded so we would have to shoot it in certain calculated angles. Also, the inside of the house might as well look like this room we’re talking in. It could not be less what it looked like in the movie. That’s a testament to our production designer Jay Healy who did an amazing job. The reason we didn’t pick the house right away was because we would have to totally redo the house and we couldn’t find a house that had everything. I decided ultimately on the house because of the exterior and we would just redo the inside because Jay is so good that it wasn’t a concern. Every single room is radically from what it really looks like.

CC: Let’s say you are a film professor teaching “Horror 101” and you want to show your class five films that best exemplify the history of horror. Which five films would they be and why?

TW: If it was real life I’d probably go further back but for the sake of right now, I would say THE EXORCIST, THE SHINING, REPULSION, THE CHANGELING, and maybe something like HALLOWEEN. If I was really working on this I would work on every decade but this is what’s coming on the top of my head. If it was real life, I’d probably put THE HAUNTING in there or FREAKS or SPIDER BABY, but the five I mentioned are the ones that jump out in my head as movies that really affected me.

CC: Where do you see the horror industry going in the next five years?

TW: I think that until the genre fails, it’s going to be the same cookie cutter stuff until it becomes non-profitable and hits rock bottom. For instance, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY just killed at the box office. It just destroyed and did unheard of numbers. The way I think that’s going to translate is that studios are going to say “We want more home videoish, BLAIR WITCH movies” but really it’s “No. We just want to see unique and good movies.” That’s the problem. The industry is not going to look at this as a good film made on an ultra low budget. They’re going to look at it as “People responded to a video camera setup, fake/real movies, let’s make more of those.”  That’s the way that they think so it’s hard. You don’t want to support a horror movie that stinks because they’ll make more of them but if you support a horror movie that’s good, they’ll just go and make weird versions of that same film again so there really isn’t any effort to try to do anything different with the genre. It’s just whatever’s successful, run it into the ground and when it hits the ground, find the new thing and run THAT into the ground. Unfortunately that’s the way we are as a society now. It’s not just horror movies, it’s everything. It’s like “Squeeze every last drop you can get out of it and then jump to the next bandwagon.” There will always be movies like THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and there will always be movies like ANTICHRIST and PARANORMAL ACTIVITY, but they will always be harder to find. Magnolia Pictures is really getting behind this movie and they are so supportive of it which I appreciate so much, but it’s really up to the people to go see it. People ask “Why are movies so bad?” The answer is because you keep on going to see them. You know why there will be a G.I. JOE 2? Because you dumb asses saw it and that’s it. The other thing is downloading movies and I gotta say this. If you’re going to download movies, than download fucking G.I. JOE. Don’t download ANTICHRIST. Go to the theater and see ANTICHRIST. Oh my God, you’ve got Lars Von Trier making this bizarre yet amazing horror movie. If you’re going to give somebody money, give it to them. Give it to IFC, the people that put it out. People don’t make those decisions and that attitude is not proactive. It’s destructive to what we all want. There will always be shitty horror movies. Why can’t it be mostly good horror films with a few shitty ones instead of it being so many shitty horror movies with only a few good ones like it is right now?

CC: What’s coming up for you?

TW: I have a web series that comes out on October 26th for IFC which is called DEAD AND LONELY. That’s the next thing. Just like with Magnolia Pictures, IFC has been really supportive of me. IFC really is the last company standing to really support truly independent movies so it was great to work with them. It’s about a vampire who finds her victim on an online dating site. They made a really cool viral website to go with it called www.Dateordie.net. I’m very psyched for it.

CC: Thanks so much for your time Ti and good luck with everything.

TW: Thanks man. Good luck as well.
 

(Special thanks to Int’l House of Publicity)