Interview With Sara Paxton And Ti West On The Innkeepers
Many people would become frightened when they find out the hotel they’re staying at is haunted. But experienced horror screenwriter-director Ti West happily embraced the opportunity. After finding out the hotel he and his crew were residing in, the Yankee Pedlar Inn, while shooting his last film, The House of the Dead, the filmmaker wanted to capture the inn’s essence on screen.
West decided to film an entire movie, the new horror-thriller The Innkeepers, based on his experiences at the Yankee Pedlar. Shot on location at the real hotel in Torrington, Connecticut, the film showed why people are so curious about death and the supernatural, and what they would do when they encounter a ghost.
The Innkeepers follows Claire (Sara Paxton) and Luke (Pat Healy), the two remaining employees of the reportedly haunted Yankee Pedlar Inn, as they cater to the remaining guests before the hotel permanently closes. Bored while on their last shifts, the two decide to prove that the rumors are true and the inn is really being haunted by Madeline O’Malley (Brenda Cooney), who is believed to have committed suicide in her room. As Claire and Luke document the evidence they encounter, they realize they come into contact with more than they bargained for, and don’t know how to escape from the evil lurking in the inn.
Paxton and West took the time to sit down with us in New York City to discuss what it was like working and living together with the rest of the cast and crew at the real Yankee Pedlar. The actress also described what attracted her to the role of Claire, while West spoke about where he came up with the idea for The Innkeepers.
Check it out below.
We Got This Covered: Ti, you came up with the inspiration for The Innkeepers during the production of your previous film, The House of the Devil, when you were staying at the Yankee Pedlar Inn in Torrington, Connecticut. What inspired you to write a movie based on your experiences there?
Ti West: On The House of the Devil, we stayed at the Yankee Pedlar because it was cheap, and it was kind of near, about 30 minutes away, from our location, which was in the middle of nowhere. We were making this satanic movie, but stuff was happening back at the hotel. We didn’t think too much of it at the time.
But when we went back to make a ghost story, I thought, I kind of lived one, so let me just write that. I’m always more attracted to things that are more personal stories, so I just kind of wrote that, and that’s where it came from.
WGTC: Sara, you play Claire, one of the last remaining employees of The Yankee Pedlar Inn, in the film. What attracted you to the role?
Sara Paxton: Well, I was working on another movie when I got the script for The Innkeepers. Ti and I also had a mutual friend who was working with me. She told me about Ti, and then we spoke on the phone. We met in L.A. when I got back.
I feel weird saying this because he’s sitting right next to me, but Ti seemed really interesting. But I hadn’t seen The House of the Devil, because I try to avoid all movies with the devil in the title. I get easily flustered. It seemed like it would be a lot of fun, and I really liked the story. I was really impressed with Ti.
WGTC: How did you prepare for your role as Claire, and what type of research did you do?
SP: I didn’t do anything, really. (laughs) I mean, besides research Ti. I sort of connected with the character. I just put myself in it.
TW: I wouldn’t say you’re like Claire, but you’re not far off. You’re more like her than like some other characters that you’ve done.
SP: Yeah, I think I could relate. The dialogue was really natural, and I was feeling it. (laughs)
WGTC: What was your working relationship with Pat like, since many of your scenes were with him?
SP: I love Pat. I think Pat’s super funny, he was really easy to get along with. It was weird-even though we didn’t film for that long of a time, I think that because we were all living together at the Yankee Pedlar, it was like frat housing. We ate all our meals together. It made everyone get close fast.
TW: Someone else said we must have had a lot of rehearsal time, and asked me how much time we had. I said none, Sara and Pat met the night before we began shooting.
I think part of it is that I think I’m a pretty good judge of character, and I said I think this will work, everyone will get along. I think there’s nothing worse than shooting where everybody doesn’t get along. When that happens, it’s horrible.
SP: I don’t even remember how it happened, I think that right away, we got along.
WGTC: What was the experience like living together in The Yankee Pedlar Inn while shooting the movie? Have you ever lived with other actors and/or directors you have worked with in the past?
SP: I’ve done that before. You did that too, Ti, you stayed at the inn (for The House of the Devil).
TW: Yeah, I’ve always been more or less confined with the cast and crew.
SP: I’ve done it before, and I didn’t get along with the people. But I got along with everybody (on The Innkeepers), everyone was cool.
WGTC: Kelly McGillis plays Leanne Rease-Jones, a TV actress turned psychic who checks into The Yankee Pedlar during its final week of operation. Ti, what motivated you to cast her in the role?
TW: Well, I cast Kelly because she had done another movie called Stake Land with the same producers, and they had recommended her. I had a hard time casting the role, because I thought it was going to be the easiest role to cast. I thought everyone was going to want to do it. I thought they were going to say, oh, this is great material, and I’d get to do something different because I’m an older actress, and I don’t get to do as much anymore.
But what I didn’t realize with older actresses, they don’t have sense of humors about being older actresses. So they were all offended that I’d even offer them the role, which was such a surprise to me. Thinking back on it, it’s not that surprising. At the time, I thought they were all going to love it, and they were all like, I don’t want to play an older actress.
Kelly was in London, doing a play. We Skyped, and she was smoking a cigarette in front of her computer. She said, I don’t give a sh*t about any of that. Right from the beginning, she was on board. She had a couple of questions for me, but we got along well. I think I answered them well. It was like the same way Pat and Sara got along.
It was just a matter of finding the right people. Like Sara, they don’t have to do a ton of research to play their character. It’s kind of already there, we just have to change a few things, and we’re there.
It’s the same thing with Pat. I knew Pat in real life. He’s not necessarily like the Luke character, but he’s not that far off. I think Kelly was kind of similar.
WGTC: Sara, since Claire admires Leanne’s acting work so much, do you look up to Kelly as an actress as well?
SP: Yeah. I mean, I was a Top Gun fan. (laughs) I think it’s like what Ti said about work, like Pat and I just got along right from the beginning. Kelly sort of made me nervous in real life, so that worked out.
TW: Kelly has an intense personality.
SP: Yeah, we mostly chatted about how it was a dog-friendly set. I had my dog, and she had her dog, so I would chat with her about that. But she would make me nervous.
TW: I think in the beginning, she might have felt like the odd man out. It took a little bit of time to bring her on board. Everyone else was instantly there from the beginning. Everyone else showed up before shoot day one, but Kelly didn’t show up until maybe week two. She came in a little late, and everyone else was already up-to-speed.
WGTC: What was the process like of preparing The Yankee Pedlar Inn for production? Did you change anything in the hotel to fit what you wanted it to look like?
TW: Well, we all thought that we wouldn’t have to change anything, and we’ll go back there and just start shooting. But we changed more than we thought we would. But if you went to The Yankee Pedlar right now, you would think we changed nothing, that it looks just like the movie. Little things we changed. It was a lot of work that you don’t see. Like I said, if you watch it, you wouldn’t notice it.
I think we changed a lot of things, but it still feels the same. So to me, it was just about getting things out of there.
WGTC: Ti, you have said that you would only be interested in making The Innkeepers if the owners of The Yankee Pedlar Inn allowed you to film the movie there. What was your reaction when they agreed to let you shoot there?
TW: (Gives sigh of relief) I mean really, there would have been no other place to make it. It was talked about, oh what if we change it. I said I don’t really want to change the script to be some place else. It was written about living at the Pedlar. There’s no other place that I know of like it. If we found some place else just like it, fine, but we weren’t going to. We lucked out.
WGTC: Did you experience any supernatural occurrences while shooting The Innkeepers?
TW: Yes, but I don’t know if it’s true. I don’t really believe in that stuff. But it’s the closest I’ve ever come to believing. There’s one story that I always tell, the one to me that’s the strangest, is the room in the movie that’s the haunted room, the honeymoon suite. The only reason we used that one was because it was on the third (top) floor, at the end of a hallway. It was big enough to do a dolly shot. It was purely technical reasons. But after we wrapped shooting, I found out that that is the most haunted room in the hotel.
SP: It’s a really weird room.
TW: Yeah, and I only picked it because we were able to do the shot that I had in my head. I didn’t feel that it was haunted, it was all technical. Then to find out it was the most haunted, it was weird. Then when you add that with lights turning on and off, doors opening and closing, TVs turning on, phones ringing and no one was there, if you add all that up, it’s a weird place.
SP: It was weird. Just the same stuff happened to me. My door would fly open violently when I was sitting on my bed, and I was like, it’s the wind, even though the window was closed! But I didn’t want to pull a Claire, and start freaking out. So I just told myself it was the creakiness of the whole place.
WGTC: Did you have to shut the hotel down when you were shooting?
TW: Almost, but there was a prom, a wedding. We had to schedule around a few things. But most of the time we were shooting, there was either nobody, or one or two people were staying there. Sometimes we had to schedule our day off around an event, because they had already booked that stuff. But by some miracle, it worked out. I thought for sure some of that stuff was going to back-fire.
The House of the Devil was a really terrible experience for me, meaning it was very hard. Everything was going wrong all the time. The Innkeepers just kind of worked out. We made it in 17 days, which is nearly impossible. We finished early every day.
SP: We had a 10-hour day everyday.
TW: Yeah, this one wasn’t so bad, I don’t know why. My next movie, I’m just going to get hammered, because this one went so well.
WGTC: Even with such a short shoot, you didn’t face any difficulties while making The Innkeepers?
TW: I don’t think another movie will go as smoothly as this one.
SP: Yeah, I never had an experience that went as well as this one did.
TW: We would shoot like nine pages a day, and three-quarters of it would be done before lunch. We would go, we need to figure out something else to shoot. (laughs) Or we’d have a new crew guy come in from another movie, and he would go, oh, eight pages, and we would be done before lunch. They would say, I’ve never seen anything like this. (laughs) It just sort of worked out.
WGTC: Sara, given that Ti wrote the screenplay for The Innkeepers, did that make it easier for you to work with him as a director?
SP: I really liked working with Ti because many times I have worked with directors who don’t know what they want. If they don’t know what they want, we do like 10,000 different takes, because they can’t make up their mind. It was so easy (with Ti), he knew what he wanted to do. He was so specific. That was great.
WGTC: Ti, as a director, is it easier for you to work on a film that you wrote the script for?
TW: Yeah, I like writing my own stuff. To me, writing, directing and editing are just film-making to me. It’s not really that compartmentalized. It would be bad if Sara asked me, why am I saying this line, and I said, I don’t know, ask the writer. It seems like a weird disconnect.
As the writer and director, I can say, here’s why, or just don’t say it. Having the ability to make those judgment calls like that, to me is what being a filmmaker, a director, is. Knowing what you want, and having that specific voice, is something I like.
WCTC: What do you think makes The Innkeepers unique from other horror films that are coming out now?
TW: Well, it takes place in a hotel. (laughs) For me, the goal was to make a charming horror movie, which I haven’t seen in awhile. Also, it’s not important, but I like when people who don’t watch horror movies go oh, this one we’ll be okay with, because it’s not the lowest common denominator of people being killed. That’s what I like, when people say I don’t really like horror movies, but this one I liked.
There’s not a lot of other horror movies right now that have a balance of regular movie versus horror movie. I like to think that I have respect for the audience. Yes, this movie’s a little slower, but the movie treats you like you have intellect.
That concludes our interview, but we’d like to thank Sara Paxton and Ti West for taking the time to talk to us.
Be sure to check out The Innkeepers, which was released on VOD on Friday, December 30, 2011, and will hit theaters on Friday, February 3.
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