TI WEST HAS long been fascinated with reviving horror history. His interconnected duology of X and Pearl —telling the twin stories of wannabe-star-slash-porn-performer Maxine Minx and wannabe-star-slash-serial-killer Pearl, both played by Mia Goth —brought fresh blood to ’70s classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and early Technicolor ’30s masterpiece The Wizard Of Oz, respectively.
Now, with trilogy-capper MaXXXine, West and Goth are taking Maxine —and maybe even Pearl too —forward in time, into the seedy heart of 1980s Hollywood. “The ’80s aspect of it was a natural, chronological thing,” says West. Set six years post-X, we’ll find Maxine trying to break beyond porn, stepping into scary sequel ‘The Puritan II’. “She’s trying to transition into the next phase of her career towards becoming a star. Her way into that is not necessarily, like, Terms Of Endearment, you know?” laughs West.
Exploring the dark side of 1985 Los Angeles brought plenty of opportunities with it —not only referencing real-life serial killer The Night Stalker (aka Richard Ramirez), but the Satanic Panic fervour and home-entertainment moral fears that defined the decade. “The backdrop of that is very relevant to the story,” West teases, “as well as the rise of movies and music in a sort of subversive, home-video, heavy-metal, controversial, censorship era. It was a very tense time in [terms of ] the reaction to certain content.”