Over the course of her odyssey through the darker sides of Hollywood in Maxxxine, the title character (Mia Goth) meets all kinds of interesting people. One of them is Larry Fessenden, the New York horror-movie mogul, playing a security guard on the studio lot where Maxine visits the Psycho house and Bates Motel. The cameo is a full-circle moment for Fessenden, who helped launch Maxxxine writer/director Ti West’s career as a producer of his early films The Roost, The House of the Devil and others through his Glass Eye Pix company.
“Ti just gave me a call and asked if I wanted to come out and do a part,” Fessenden recalls, “and of course, I said yes. He enticed me with tales of shooting on the Psycho lot at Universal; he knows I love Hitchcock. It was just magical to be there, on Hitchcock’s old set. Plus, when you arrive at Universal, there’s the Jaws ride as well, so I was in seventh heaven!”
Fessenden’s scene in front of Norman Bates’ old abode paired him with Kevin Bacon, playing sleazy private detective John Labat. “Having a scene with Kevin was fun; I wanted to get my degree of Kevin Bacon number as low as I could, so I got to achieve that!” he laughs. “We shot that at the end of the day, running out of time, as one does on a small, low-budget film. And then in my other scene, I’m at the gate letting Maxine in, and she pronounces her name, and I say with great knowing that I’ve seen her work, or whatever my line is, indicating that I’ve been watching her pornos. They gave me some fun lines!”
This was the first time Fessenden shared a set with Goth or Bacon, and he says, “I got to hang out with Kevin a little; we talked about his farm upstate, and his goats [laughs] and this and that, so I enjoyed that. It was different with Mia; that was the first time I’d met her, and when you’re doing a scene, you’re just working character to character. Mia’s quite intense, and she had a lot to do in that movie, so I didn’t want to overstep. She sort of knows who I am because I believe she became aware of the story I’m about to tell…”
That story involves Fessenden’s heretofore undisclosed involvement in X, the first in the West/Goth trilogy. In a sense, he reveals, the filmmaker/actor has “acted opposite” Goth before. He provided the voice of elderly antagonist Howard, played in X by Stephen Ure opposite Goth as Howard’s wife Pearl, both under heavy old-age/prosthetic makeup.
“I got a call from Ti saying, ‘I might have something for you in X,’” Fessenden relates. “I thought that was peculiar, because I believed he had finished shooting in New Zealand and was deep into post. He said he might want me to voice the old man, and I said, ‘Well, that’s intriguing…’ because one thing everyone knows is that I hate flying. I couldn’t bear the idea of going to New Zealand [laughs]. So when he made that proposal, I remember the tingling in my spine, thinking I couldn’t refuse Ti, but how the hell was I gonna get down there? Luckily, he said we could do it in a New York studio.
“Howard was played wonderfully by Stephen Ure,” Fessenden continues, “but Ti felt Stephen couldn’t get his lines out with the teeth and all the prosthetics he had, and wanted another go at the character. I remembered that a year prior, when he was talking about X, he said that he wanted the old people to be sort of monsters, in the classic way of being under a lot of practical makeup. And I think he loved the idea of yet another level of artifice, that it wasn’t even the actor’s voice.
“We tried it many ways; I would do practice runs, and Ti would set them down. He got very particular, because now he had a lot of control; postproduction is where you assert yourself, whereas on a shoot, you have to run through the day. The first thing I wanted to find was a Texas accent that could work.
“I did do some different line readings, and there’s even some slightly changed dialogue that Ti wanted; that was another thing he realized he could do because of this process. But I was very influenced by Stephen’s rhythms and intonations, so I still consider it his performance, and that’s why I didn’t take a credit. The boys offered me an obscure acknowledgment of some sort, at least a voice credit, and I said, ‘Let’s just leave it be; one day we’ll reveal it.’
“The most important thing, believe it or not,” Fessenden adds, “was just to get the sound of the room. Ti didn’t want to draw attention to the artifice of it, despite what I described earlier about how he wanted this cool insider thing about the monsters, so to speak. He did want the recording to be convincing, so we had to play with microphone distance, and that’s one reason we did it several times, to get that aspect right.”
Fessenden is a big fan of the final product, and another element of X that is “very dear to me” is the presence of old friend and frequent collaborator Owen Campbell as aspiring director RJ.
“I’ve watched him grow up over the years,” the filmmaker says. “I know his dad; we did theater together, so Owen was always around, and [writer/director] Joe Maggio and I put Owen and his brother in Bitter Feast. Then Owen did some Tales from Beyond the Pale, working with Vincent D’Onofrio and Kevin Corrigan, and of course he’s in Depraved. Owen is a real pal, and it was very nice that Ti followed the Glass Eye Pix trajectory enough that he knew that would be fun for me.
“But Owen got the gig through his own talents, and he’s heartbreaking in X. Ti did a great job on that overall, and of course the one-two punch with Pearl was thrilling. And I am also in Pearl, I’ll have you know [laughs], though not as remarkably. I have one line; when Pearl goes into town, you can hear somebody saying, ‘It’s the end of the world!’ or something to that effect, so I got a voiceover in that one, too. I really think the trilogy is more about me than this Mia Goth character, quite honestly!” he laughs again.
As for his own directing/producing work, he’s currently awaiting Doppelgänger Releasing’s regional theatrical break (beginning July 19) of Glass Eye’s Crumb Catcher, the black comedy/horror film marking the feature directorial debut of Depraved cinematographer Chris Skotchdopole. He’s also working on special features for the upcoming physical-media release of his werewolf film Blackout, and developing the movie that will unite his monster characters from Blackout, Depraved (Frankenstein-esque creature) and Habit (vampire).
He notes that he has completed a script for the latter, “but it’s only the first pass. I’m still figuring out what’s working, what isn’t, and what’s practical. I like things to percolate; I actually wrote it a while back, and then put it aside. It’s very daunting, finding the money and figuring out how to make movies low-budget over and over, but I don’t mind it, except when I realize, ‘Damn, I really did see that as a crane shot, so how am I gonna do this?’ That’s the puzzle, and you never really know, till you’ve made it, what it’s gonna be.”
Maxxxine is now in theaters. For more, check out our interview with Ti West and the Maxxxine cast.
