Interview: Ti West (Dead & Lonely, Cabin Fever II) Pt. 1
By Alex Langley - October 26, 2009
Previous post:
Review: Dead & Lonely on IFC.com
Paige Stark in Dead & Lonely episode 1, "Date or Die"
Dead & Lonely: “IFC Original five episode web series DEAD & LONELY, written, produced and directed by cult indie horror filmmaker Ti West (The Roost, Trigger Man, The House Of The Devil) premieres on IFC.com today at noon ET/PT. Each additional episode will air every night this week on IFC.com at noon. In this series, two lonely Los Angeles singles are brought together via an Internet dating website called DateOrDie.net. The only problem is that one of them is a vampire.”
One thing about that description has me wondering: How can online content premiere at noon in both Eastern and Pacific time zones?
Last week I spoke with Ti West who created, wrote, and directed Dead & Lonely.
Llama: How did you wind up doing this program for the Internet?
West: I had worked with a friend of mine, Joe, on his web series for IFC. It seemed like a great opportunity and he’s had nothing but good things to say about IFC. I went in there and they wanted to a sort of horror-ish project, so I pitched them something and they liked it. It was kind of that simple. It was kind of an experiment for me to try to do something short form and episodic. I had been watching a lot of TV on DVD, so I had the idea to do cliffhangers and things like that.
Llama: Had you had this particular story in mind already?
West: No, once doing a web series came up, this was just something I came up with and pitched it to them.
Llama: What kind of web content are you into as your entertainment:
West: I’m probably addicted and obsessed as much as anyone else to Facebook or constantly refreshing my email and reading the news and things like that. I’m glued to the computer more often than I’d like to be. Movie news. I like the mundane realism everyone has in being addicted to their computers, having a vampire be that way because a vampire in 2009 would actually be more introverted than the rest of us because they couldn’t have friends and they couldn’t go out in the day. So all of their entertainment would be through the computer.
Llama: Like an agoraphobic.
West: Kind of, yeah.
Llama: You’ve done a number of other horror-related works as well – House of the Devil, Cabin Fever 2… Any particular reason this genre appeals to you so strongly?
West: Not really. I’ve always had a fondness for it my whole life. For my first film, The Roost, I had met Larry Fessenden and he basically was going to make some sort of no-budget horror movie. He said, ‘You know, if the only thing stopping you from making a feature film was money, what if I gave you a little bit of money?’ So I made this movie called The Roost, it did very well for all of us, and because of that, it was not so hard to get money to do another horror movie. And when that one did well, it was not so hard to get money for another horror movie. So the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to get money to make these non-horror movies, but people go, ‘I like this, but I would give you money right now for your satanic horror movie.’ I go, ‘All right, let’s go make this,’ because I don’t want to sit around and just wait my whole life. I’d like to make mostly horror movies but not only horror movies.
Llama: What else would you like to make?
West: I’ve got this hooker road movie that I’m very fond of. I’ve got a weird romantic comedy that I like a lot, and I have a fantasy-ish sort of movie. And then I’ve been circling a musical comedy – musical not in the sense that they’re singing but it’s about a band – and I’m hoping that will happen. In the meantime, when people show up and say, ‘Hey, we like your script that you wrote for this horror movie and we want you to write and direct it,’ it’s kind of hard to say no, especially when it’s your own stuff.
Llama: What kind of horror entertains you most? We’ve got slashers, we’ve got monsters, we’ve got ghosts.
West: I don’t look at it specifically like the genre convention as much as I look at it like I like movies that take themselves seriously. I think the horror genre is really great because it opens up this wide spectrum to experiment with all different things from all different elements of the genre. Unfortunately right now in mainstream, it’s become lowest common denominator and it’s just all about people getting killed, and that didn’t use to be the case. You used to have these great auteurs making very serious horror movies like The Exorcist or The Shining or Rosemary’s Baby or The Changeling and Halloween. I like movies that are intellectually stimulating, that are challenging, and that treat themselves like serious movies and not like teenagers at the multiplex.
This interview will continue…
Interview: Ti West (Dead & Lonely, House of the Devil) Pt. 2
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