Ti West Articles
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Director Ti West’s 2015 stints on MTV’s SCREAM and WEtv’s SOUTH OF HELL established him as a viable filmmaker in the television space, which, in the age of streaming and endless content, presents a far more reliable supply of paycheck opportunities than feature filmmaking can provide. After releasing his under-the-radar western IN A VALLEY OF…
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Notable Festivals: SXSW With an enviable body of well-crafted and warmly-received horror features under his belt, director Ti West was no doubt eager to show the cinematic community what else he could do. He had an idea for a western that drew inspiration from classic genre touchstones like HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (1973), as well as…
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Over the course of a decade, director Ti West had been quietly building an accomplished body of independent feature film work in the horror genre. In the absence of breakout hits, he had nonetheless managed to accumulate a notable degree of creative and cultural capital that enabled his continued output. It was only a matter…
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Notable Festivals: Toronto Up until September 11th, 2001, the greatest loss of American life in a single event was not, as some may think, Pearl Harbor—or any other act of war for that matter. On November 18th, 1978, United States Congressman Leo Ryan and a small delegation visited the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project— led by…
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While THE INNKEEPERS (2011) is director Ti West’s latest feature as of this writing, he’s kept busy with a number of directing efforts that take a page from another grand tradition of the horror genre: the anthology, or omnibus, film. As part of the first generation of directors to come up in the age of…
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Notable Festivals: South By Southwest, Melbourne, Stockholm After the success of 2009’s THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL, director Ti West teamed up once again with his mentor and producing partner Larry Fessenden to realize his vision for an old-fashioned ghost story titled THE INNKEEPERS (2011). He was inspired by a charming, spooky hotel in Connecticut called…
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With the advent of his career occurring squarely in the middle of the social media age, director Ti West created opportunities for himself by befriending and collaborating with like-minded contemporaries, much like the Film Brat generation had done decades before. The SXSW success of his earlier films THE ROOST (2005) and TRIGGER MAN (2007) led…
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Notable Festivals: Tribeca Every week, it seems like a handful of new horror films hit store shelves, coming seemingly from nowhere and looking like complete and utter garbage. The market is literally flooded with these derivative shlock films, but why? A staggering majority of independent filmmakers have clued into the fact that horror films are…
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My first job out of college was as an administrative assistant at Lionsgate Entertainment in Santa Monica. On my first day, I had a lot of downtime, so I delved into the script library and, out of pure boredom, chose to read director Eli Roth’s early draft of CABIN FEVER 2: SPRING FEVER. It was…
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Notable Festivals: South By Southwest Director Ti West enjoyed the modest success of his feature debut THE ROOST (2005), but quickly found himself languishing back in the same obscurity as his peers while he was trying to get his next project off the ground. After about two years, West approached his executive producer and mentor…
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Notable Festivals: South by Southwest These days, it’s extremely rare that an internship will lead to a full-time job. It’s rarer still, as an aspiring filmmaker, for an internship to lead directly to your first professional directing effort. However, that’s what happened with director Ti West, who interned under producer/actor Larry Fessenden’s Glass Eye Pix. …
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Years Active: 2001-present Alma Mater: School of Visual Arts Associated Movements: Horror Independents, Mumblecore Influences: Stanley Kubrick, Roman Polanski, William Friedkin As an avid read of independent filmmaking blogs and news sites, I was first exposed to indie horror director Ti West around 2011, when his feature THE INKEEPERS was making the rounds at film…