Ti West Talks The Innkeepers

When it comes to his films, Ti West is a triple threat - writing, directing, and editing his unique brand of indie horror movies. He's just finished shooting his latest, The Innkeepers, about two employees at an allegedly haunted hotel hoping to get to the bottom of the supernatural happenings. Mr. West was gracious enough to speak to us about the process of making the film.

You've just wrapped up shooting - have you started post-production?

Not yet. I just ordered a new computer and it's supposed to get here today and I'll get started when it gets here.

You guys were running a really hectic shooting schedule. Are you at least enjoying this little bit of downtime?

Uh. it's pretty good. It's kind of a double-edged sword in that it's kind of hard to shift from this really intense schedule to doing nothing.

Compared to the House of the Devil shoot last year, how does this rank in terms of difficulty?

It's much, much easier.

I understand you used a lot of the same talent behind the camera.

I'd have to say almost all the people that I worked with people came back to work on this movie and I just had to swap out a couple of people. And all the people I worked with were really great. And I'd have to say this is the best crew. And I wouldn't say that it was easy but filmmaking is very traumatic experience and this one wasn't so bad.

Well I'm sure they'll be happy to hear they're one of the best crews to work with.

Yeah, they should be.

How did you pick leads Sara Paxton and Pat Healy?

Pat I've known for a little while, so that was just a phone call. But Sara was someone that we just went through a bunch of people and she came up a few times. A friend of mine was in a movie with her and texted me saying "Oh, she's awesome." So I called her and we just really had a good conversation - she's super mellow and really easy to get along with. She really liked the movie too. It was a weird thing where I never met her and I needed to know that she was right for it, but when I met her I couldn't have been happier. It was a weird situation where we didn't get to rehearse or anything like that but she just killed it.

Yeah, when I was talking to Peter [Phok, producer on the film] he mentioned that Sara and Pat didn't get a whole lot of prep time prior to the shoot, so they just kind of hit the ground running.

Yeah, zero time which is always just a special nightmare. And we didn't want to do it that way but that's just low-budget filmmaking. But it did not matter, because maybe luck came into play. It was just the right people because [the lack of prep] was never an issue.

How did Kelly McGillis become part of the film? How did you sell her on The Innkeepers?

She'd done a film with Peter (Stakeland) a couple of months ago. And she was in London doing a play, so I just Skyped with her and told her about the film and she wanted to do it. It was a weird situation that Peter brought it up and I thought it was interesting but I definitely hadn't thought of her from the beginning.

One of the things that I notice about your films is that they're very focused - small casts, limited sets. Is that a deliberate choice or just the nature of independent filmmaking?

It's a little bit of both. When you're making a low-budget movie I think the only way to do it well is to be aware of your resources. So you can't do a low-budget movie with a ton of people in it because it becomes too expensive. So with this movie it feels like we kind of hooked up and it's a small movie about two people because it's a low budget movie it's that's also because it's what the movie is. It really wouldn't exist if it wasn't a low-budget movie, so it's not like it was a movie idea that I shrunk down to make it low-budget. It was more like, "this is what we can do and the best way we can make it."

It almost feels like this kind of ghost story feels like a throwback. It's not deliberately a thrill ride, there's not a lot of noise like some movies that are almost Brucknerian in how busy and obnoxious they can be. It feels like mainstream horror has moved more towards bombast whereas HoTD and The Innkeepers seem to be doing something else.

I don't know, I just think mainstream horror is made for the lowest common denominator so it's just become mostly stupid. Because lowest common denominator sells. I get what you're saying, but it's more that [our movies] are less self aware and it's just trying to be a movie that happens to be a horror movie. And that just does not happen - maybe once a year with mainstream movies. And that's just unfortunate because I feel like mainstream horror is in a really terrible place. But it's really up to audiences. I mean, it's up to filmmakers to make the movies but the reason all the movies are the same is because people go to see them and if people stopped going to see them they'd stop making them.

Do you think that streak of irony has hurt horror? Or is it just a tool?

I don't know if it necessarily hurts movies - it's more of a style of moviemaking in the kind of moviemaking that says "you need x amount of kills and x amount of nudity." And people like seeing like seeing big things happen and like flashbacks that go "whoosh" and [studios] just have it down to a science like making a commerical. And there's no real filmmaking to it, just a lot of style over substance. And it's just the same movie over and over again and it's just because they're successful. And it's not that it's a bad thing, people just keep going to see them. So as long as they keep making money, the people who make them just go, "well, I guess I'll just keep making money."

In previous interviews you've talked about not repeating yourself. What did you do to keep this movie fresh for you?

This movie's is very different in terms of where the camera's placed and the editing and things like that. But the least enjoyable stuff in the movie is the scary stuff after you've done five horror movies in a row for years now, including short films. I've done so many things popping out, so many heads blowing up and that sort of stuff that when you come back to horror it's like "ugh, this again." So the stuff that's exciting to me is the stuff that's not that type of horror. So for me it's about working with the actors or working with the new steadicam, and about the character-driven elements of the plot. You're watching this movie to hang out with these characters and not so much to relive the ghost story. There's a tremendous amount of dialog when compared to my other films so there's a different kind of vibe.

I don't know if it was you or Peter that mentioned that this screenplay has the most dialog of all of your scripts so far.

It's probably up there. I have two others that are waiting to get made that [have more dialog] but this is the one I started work on. But it wasn't a conscious choice to have other movies [with less dialog]. Like, maybe my first one didn't have a lot of dialog because it was a super low budget movie that we were trying to get made and Triggerman was a movie about hunting and people don't really talk when they hunt - so then I became the "no dialog guy." HoTD is just one girl in a house so that limits the amount of talking in the movie. These weren't specific choices but this will defnitely be a really chatty movie and a very funny movie as well. It has a lot of dry humor mixed in for contrast.

That was one of the things that excited me on-set. I was watching a scene play out that seemed to hint at a light tone from your other films.

It's totally a different tone. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a comedy, but everything that's not scary is funny on some level. And the interaction between the two characters is usually charming and funny. It's not a film about a couple of people down on their luck, taking a bad job - it's not about that. It's two very charming people working in a hotel and the kind of hijinks that they get into.

I think I heard it described on-set as a workplace horror-comedy.

Yeah, it's kind of like how Ghostbusters was scary when it was scary, so kind of like that. It's not a comedy necessarily. The best part of directing, and making these kind of movies is all the character-driven stuff. All of the other stuff is cool when you see the movie and it's fine when the audience reacts to it but that's all 100% technical. You have to get the blood to spurt now and you need to get a cut now and you don't really get to watch and enjoy that as a filmmaker. Making that is very stressful and a very complicated endeavor.

It almost sounds like you've got a romantic comedy or something just wanting to get out of you.

Yeah. I mean, horror is my favorite genre but I haven't made five horror movies in a row because that was my goal. It's just that I don't like sitting down - I like to constantly be making movies. So I was fortunate because I got to keep working, and if it's from my own script I don't mind them. But it's not my goal to just make horror movies.

Do you consciously just work on your own scripts or have you not come across something you want to work on yet?

Well I haven't come across anything. And for me, I just learned about myself that writing, editing, and directly are all the same job. Now if I got offered some giant, huge movie with the mega opportunity to work with a bunch of exciting people then that would be a kind of situation I'd need to figure out. But there's something about the smaller scale for me. And I read other peoples' scripts and I don't get it. And if I could take someone else's script and rework it to make sense in my brain I could live with that. But if you come onto a movie, no one is going to want to throw their writer under the bus, and they're not going to want to pay you to do that. Some people can just take a script and run with it but I've just learned that I'm not quite cut out for it.

I kind of detect a streak of obsessive control (I mean that in the best way).

I guess so. I mean it's not something that's come up in the last few years - that's just what directing movies is. And one person has to sort of be in charge and make sure it all goes smoothly. And I've done so much my whole life making movies that I know what it takes and I know what to look for in a crew. I just think that when you're writing/directing a movie you're in control of that movie. And you can't have too many cooks in the kitchen or it just comes out muddled and confused.

It's fascinating to see how hands-on you are in the production - to see that you've jumped pretty quickly from getting the script out, to shooting it, to cutting it.

It's just the way I know how to do it best. I mean, if it was a $40 million movie I wouldn't go in and say "You have to use my script," because they'd just throw me out. Becasue then it's this giant movie, and it's all this money and [the studio] is paying for all this stuff. So then you can relinquish some of this control as a trade-off. And you can say "Okay, I'm going to work with an editor who'll be hired for me." But when you do the small movies I figure as long I'm going to make them I should make them the way that I want. So I think that if this is the last movie I'm going to make then I'm going to make it how I want because that's how I want to go out.

A lot of horror seems to be about the characters pushing back against the supposedly supernatural. How did that figure into The Innkeepers?

A lot of the script is about perception. And are there ghosts or are you crazy and making it up? And if you are, are you scared of them or how are you reacting to them. The whole movie's about perceptions and how we react to them. It's about two people who are really obsessed with the ghost in the hotel and I had this idea - I watch these ghost hunting shows and there's like 5 of them and they're all in their third season and all they do is go to the most haunted place on earth with every piece of technology possible and psyhcics to prove they're haunted and not ONE of them can prove a frickin' thing. So just give up on that job, because it's not working. Or, I'm just waiting for them to find a ghost and just freak out becuase they don't know how to deal with it. I just think that they'd go "ahh!" and run away because they'd be so scared. But I've always been obsessed with people who are so obsessed with something but have no result for it, because what makes them different from everyone else? And what happens when they do have success with the thing they spend all of their time talking about doing? So that's the big theme of the movie.

I know it's really early to ask, but how long do you think you'll be in post for this movie?

I know that I'll probably be done with the editing by the end of the summer and then I'll work with the sound and effects people for a couple of months. And it should be done by the end of the year but I don't think anyone will get to see this until sometime in 2011. I wish it could be sooner, but you know from the day I started writing the script to the day we finished shooting it's been about a year which is pretty remarkable.