Ti West is one among many filmmakers enjoying a great year. March was a big month for the writer-director. XHis A24-produced love letter from 1970s slasher films is titled “Love Letter to Slasher Films”. Now, he’s back with Pearl. The prequel film is set 60 years prior to the events in this new film. XHe reunites with star Mia GothThe role of, who plays the second film and reprises it in the play Pearl‘s titular killer. The films together have made Goth and West one of the most interesting director-actor pairings in Hollywood.
Despite their apparent similarities, PearlAlso, it is strikingly different than X. Unlike West’s previous directorial effort, Pearl boasts a vibrant, colorful look that makes it feel, as West recently remarked during a conversation with Digital Trends, like a “live-action Disney movie from the 1940s, ’50s, or ’60s.” The film’s playful Technicolor aesthetic, when combined with its tale of madness and murder, helps cement Pearl as the second great horror movie that West has released this year.
West discusses how a global lockdown helped him plan his surprise. XPrequel: What it was like to write the script PearlGoth names Michael Mann’s beloved thriller, “Goth”, as he considers it to have the best needle drop cinematography has ever seen.
(Note – This interview contains minor spoilers Pearl and has had its length and clarity edited.)
Digital Trends: You’ve mentioned that you wrote PearlWhile making XBut how was it actually done? How quickly did you write the film’s script?
Ti WestIt took about two weeks for the bulk of it. Because we went to New Zealand to make it, I can only say that. XBecause it was peak COVID, New Zealand was safe to film in. So after we’d gotten our visas sorted, been granted our essential workers permits, and had a crew assembled, we were going to go and build all these locations for X. To me, it seemed weird to then just tear all that down and go home when we had no sense of whether we’d ever make a movie again.
We were so blessed to be there, that I had the idea of making two movies and staying in New Zealand. I didn’t know how I was going to convince A24 of that, but I thought, “We can’t make a sequel to X because I don’t want to just have more people show up at a farm and get killed. That doesn’t make sense.” So the question became, “Well, how do we use all the same sets?”
I thought, “Well, we could go backward and focus on a younger Pearl.” At the same time, I was already talking to Mia a lot about Pearl’s backstory because we catch up with Pearl very late in her life in XThis was how I came up with the idea for the second movie I wanted. I pitched it to A24 and they were intrigued, but they weren’t quite ready to just make two movies. We had to go through a mandatory quarantine period in order to enter New Zealand so we were all forced to stay for two weeks in a hotel. Mia was there first, so I began writing the report right away.
Eventually, I said to her, “Let’s do it together.” After that, we’d FaceTimeFor those two weeks, we just put together what essentially became our gist Pearl. When we were released from quarantine, we sent it to A24. They became more intrigued and, about a month later, they said, “OK, we’ll do it,” which is incredible because they were greenlighting a prequel to a movie we hadn’t even shot yet. We were able to make the movie because they did it at that moment. XWhat? Pearlit was going be. It was a truly unique situation.
Mia has co-writing credit Pearl. How was it to write with her?
There wouldn’t be any PearlWithout Mia. It felt to me that she was a part of the creation. This was the only way it made sense to me and it was awesome. I had never worked with an actor before. She was familiar with the character and had been writing together. We FaceTimed to discuss her backstory. I would write things or she would give me stuff to write about.
She would then send stuff to me and I would put her scenes into more of a script format because she hadn’t really done that before. We would just bounce stuff back and forth, or I would say, “Hey, what kind of scene do you want to do in a movie?” She’d go, “I like this,” and we would say, “OK, well how can we work that into it?” We came up with the film’s scenes that way.
Pearl feels like a riff on a kind of movie that hasn’t been given the horror treatment very often. How did you get the idea?
The main driving force of the film for me was Pearl’s wonder, hope, and ambition. To me, she felt somewhat childishly naïve, and that made Pearl feel like a Disney movie in my mind, like a kind of live-action Disney movie from the 1940s, ’50s, or ’60s. The contrast between that and Pearl’s psychological journey felt, in a demented way, fresh. It felt like a way for me to take something that was relatively retro and kind of modernize it in a way that I hadn’t seen done before.
The film’s set design is really striking. Bright pastel colors are all that is used to cover everything. In your mind, was that just a reflection of Pearl’s own optimism and sense of wonder?
It’s true that it can be done in a way but once you begin committing to the aesthetic you must commit. You couldn’t half-ass it or else it wouldn’t look like anything. We were just coming off, so it was strange. X, which had a very distinct aesthetic. We started to work on the project. Pearl and we started redesigning the sets, I definitely thought, “Oh … I hope this works [laughs]. There are some big swings here.” But, you know, if you’re gonna get wet, you might as well go swimming, and we just went for it.
PearlIt is also a character study. XIt is an ensemble film. It seems like this greatly influenced the structure of both films. Did you just see the differences in the films?
I don’t do a lot of thinking like that about my scripts. I often have a sense for the story or characters and then I start writing. I don’t really outline. I get the characters to communicate with one another, get scenes moving, and then things turn out the way that they do.
Although I am familiar with the basic plot of each movie, I do not know everything. Pearl, it wasn’t like I took a different approach necessarily than I did with X. It was just about asking, “OK, what’s Pearl’s story?” Mia and I just took it from there. From an editing perspective, however, it was a good idea. Pearl’s certainly a more straightforward beast because it’s never bouncing around to as many points of view as X.
The violence in PearlIt’s very different now than it was back in X, which leaned into its ’70s-inspired slasher movie version of gore. Did you make that conscious decision?
It was a completely different story. With this film, it was always about serving Pearl’s psychology and emotions. It’s a more traditional movie than X is, and it’s probably a more well-structured film all around because it’s about a person going through something and less about a group of people going to a place and shit happening. In that way, it tells a more traditional story, but every choice in it was pretty much made just to serve Pearl’s emotions.
Pearl also culminates with what is essentially one very long monologue, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horror movie do before. How did you and Mia land on that as the film’s climax?
The climax of the movie is quite showy visually, but I had always thought that Mia should be in the close-up. The climax had to be about Pearl’s psychology and her emotions. That’s just what the climax had to be. It wasn’t about something blowing up or people getting killed. It was about Pearl’s feelings, and all roads led to it.
I don’t know why it became a monologue, but I think one day we just thought, “Maybe she’ll just say how she’s feeling.” From there, the dominoes slowly started to fall and we ended up with the monologue that’s in the movie, and Mia kills it. It’s all a credit to her.
The shot you pull off after Pearl’s monologue is one of my favorite horror movie moments that I’ve seen in a long time.
It’s a wonderful thing. This shot had some very high stakes. From the beginning of the movie I had that shot in my mind. It was an extremely difficult task. It’s really a credit to Mia and [castmate] Emma [Jenkins-Purro]They synchronized everything perfectly. It was difficult and I did not have a backup plan. [laughs]. I was like, “We’re gonna have to do this all day, and I don’t know what to do if we fail.” But it’s a credit to everyone involved that we actually did it.
It ends on an interesting note. You don’t ever flash-forward to XOr, you can show Pearl again as an elderly woman. Did it always have to be the end? PearlWhat are your favorite places?
It was always going that it would end as it ended.
Really?
Yeah, and the ending is a big credit to Mia’s talent. It was an original idea of mine. Pearl was going to open with a freeze frame involving an alligator, which it does, and I thought that we’d have the end credits be Pearl giving a big smile that we’d freeze frame. My strange idea was that Pearl would try to hold an organic frame for as long she could. I sprung it on Mia right before we shot the scene and she was like, “OK, I’ll try it.”
We did it only once and I knew we got it. What you see is what really happened. I didn’t know what was gonna happen before we shot it. I just told her, “Hold it for as long as you can until your face gives out,” and I was just sitting there watching it happen. I saw what everybody sees when they see the movie, and I thought, “This is the perfect encapsulation of how this story ends and what’s still brewing for the future.”
Two more questions: The first is: What’s your favorite movie you’ve seen this year?
You know what? I have seen very little this year. I would love for you to visit. The FabelmansTIFF premiered “” at its inaugural event.. What have you seen this year? [laughs]? I’ve seen Maverick: Top GunLike everyone else, which was fantastic. But I’m trying to think what else I’ve seen that was good. It’s a lot. I have one more week and then I can sleep for a minute and, hopefully, get caught up on a whole year’s worth of movies.
Last question: Both XAnd Pearl feature some of this year’s best musical moments, so what’s one of your favorite movie needle drops?
The music is my favorite. Send me an angelMontage in Rad [laughs]This is a BMX movie that I first saw as a child. This was a memorable movie for me. [Quentin]Tarantino does it probably as well as anyone. Every movie Tarantino makes has at least one truly amazing needle drop. But I’m trying to think of what I’ve seen lately that has a really good one …
The best one, however, is in Manhunter! The As Strong as I Am needle drop in Manhunter when Tom Noonan thinks he’s watching Joan Allen flirt with somebody else, but she actually just has an eyelash in her eye. The way he’s gripping the dashboard while that song plays is so great.
Pearl It is currently playing in theatres across the country.
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