‘I Don't Have A Backup Plan’: How 'MaXXXine’s' Director Pulled Off A Shoot At One Of Cinema’s Most Iconic Locations
Interview with Moses Sumney, Ti West, Giancarlo Espositio
Transcript
00:00It's not just an ode to horror cinema of the 20th century,
00:04but just all cinema.
00:05You have so many different references from
00:07Giallo to Chinatown to Blade Runner.
00:10I'm curious just kind of how much of that was first draft design
00:13versus like how much kind of came organically as the film came together.
00:16Most of it was probably in the scripts.
00:18I mean, I think to set the third movie in Hollywood
00:20and to take it as far as we took it in scope-wise,
00:24you know, this trilogy is sort of about cinema in a way.
00:26It's about a lot of things, but one thing is about,
00:29you know, if in X they're trying to make a movie
00:31and it's what it's like to make a low-budget movie
00:32and be outside of the system and outside of Hollywood,
00:35but still be able to try to carve your own path via movies.
00:38And then Pearl is someone who's sort of looking to the screen
00:41as a hopeful thing and how her life could be different
00:43if only she had a life like in the movies and the glamour.
00:46And then now in Maxine, she's actually here.
00:48She's in the belly of the beast.
00:50And, you know, I just wanted to embrace that to its fullest.
00:54Were there any ideas that you had that you weren't able to kind of use?
00:57I mean, you get to use, like, the Bates Hotel, the Psycho House.
01:01We were very fortunate that, even today, I still think about that
01:05because we had to get Universal to say okay, which they did,
01:07and then we had to get the Hitchcock Estate to say okay.
01:09And it was in the script.
01:10So I remember it was the first thing, Jacob Jaffe, the producer,
01:13that was the first task because I was like,
01:15I don't have a backup plan.
01:16There's not a better location that we could go to and talk about.
01:20And because we referenced that in X,
01:22it was such a payoff to come all the way back around and be there.
01:25And, you know, credit to both of them.
01:28And it was very surreal to shoot there and to photograph it
01:30and to not be making Psycho but to be photographing it.
01:33It was very surreal.