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Interviewer: So, this is your first trip to Sundance, you’re practically fresh out of NYU film school, how are the nerves?
Jade West: I really don’t get nervous. I’ve been making films and showing them to everyone I could since I was a kid, so it’s not a new experience. This is definitely larger scale, sure, but if they don’t like it, f**k them.
Interviewer: (laughs) I think there are a lot of filmmakers out there who feel the same way, they just don’t say it.
Jade West: They might feel better if they do.
Interviewer: Maybe. And this attitude, this idea that no one can stop you, this is something that’s been said about your movie, that it doesn’t stop to explain itself and it doesn’t make any apologies.
Jade West: I grew up on horror films, I love them, they’re why I’m in this business. When I started putting this movie together, I wasn’t necessarily thinking about a message, I just wanted to make the kind of movie I wanted to see when I was sixteen.
Interviewer: And the roots of this project started when you were actually around that age, correct?
Jade West: I was seventeen and it was the summer between junior and senior year of high school. I made a short with some friends called Death Puppet, and it was definitely a parent project to Statuette. I spent a lot of my time at NYU cultivating the idea, which is why I chose to write the script as my senior project.
Interviewer: Speaking of that high school experience, there’s a rumor that you and another Sundance attendee, Tori Vega, were high school sweethearts. Is there any truth to that?
Jade West: There is truth to that, yes. I actually had a chance to see her film, last night. She’s great in it and I wish her the best with this and anything else she does.
Interviewer: So no hard feelings about her recent engagement to her co-star Chester Fields?
Jade West: Not at all. High school was a while ago.
Interviewer: What about you, any marriage prospects on the horizon?
Jade West: You know, as cliche as it is, I’m fine being married to my work. I love film, I always have. The great thing about movies is that, once they’re finished, they don’t change.