Martin Scorsese on Ti West: “He has a pure, undiluted love for cinema”
The iconic American filmmaker Martin Scorsese is one to choose his words carefully, penning the scripts for some of his most influential films, including Mean Streets, Goodfellas and Casino. Writing hard-hitting salt of the American earth-type characters for such actors as Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Al Pacino and Ray Liotta, few auteurs have been able to capture the energy of the national psyche as well as Scorsese.
Often collaborating with writer Paul Schrader, who has worked with the filmmaker on such releases as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ and Bringing out the Dead. Schrader’s own experiences as a troubled writer were brought to many of these projects, with Travis Bickle of Taxi Driver being directly inspired by the screenwriter’s own turbulent and troubled past.
Having always carefully considered his words, this makes Scorsese’s comments on the American filmmaker Ti West even more extraordinary.
Speaking about West’s brand new horror movie Pearl, starring Mia Goth, during a new interview with IndieWire, the Taxi Driver director stated: “Ti West’s movies have a kind of energy that is so rare these days, powered by a pure, undiluted love for cinema”. Indeed, the filmmaker didn’t stop there, with Scorsese having far more to say about the director who recently released both X and Pearl in the space of mere months.
“You feel it in every frame,” Scorsese explained before spilling out his love for West’s recent works of horror, “A prequel to X made in a diametrically opposite cinematic register (think ’50s Scope colour melodramas), Pearl makes for a wild, mesmerising, deeply — and I mean deeply — disturbing 102 minutes”.
Whilst both X and Pearl were directed by West, the latter was written by its lead star Mia Goth, who has come on staggering leaps and bounds in the industry in recent years. Indeed, the blossoming of Goth, from relative obscurity to Hollywood’s most eccentric star is remarkable, and with the production of the sequel movie MaXXXine already in production, alongside an upcoming Brandon Cronenberg collaboration, keep your eyes peeled on her career progression.
Speaking about both her and the acclaimed filmmaker, Scorsese writes, “West and his muse and creative partner Mia Goth really know how to toy with their audience… before they plunge the knife into our chests and start twisting. I was enthralled, then disturbed, then so unsettled that I had trouble getting to sleep. But I couldn’t stop watching”.
Radiating a self-evident passion for the genre, Ti West learnt his craft from the very bottom of the industry ladder, touching on almost every aspect of horror on his way up, making low-budget flicks such as The Roost, Trigger Man and Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever, before his first critical success with 2009’s The House of the Devil. Itself a distinctive eccentric question mark, sporting a distinctive look and style that recalled the heyday of 1980s horror, the genre pastiche would pave the groundwork for West’s modern successes.
