Tyler-Marie Evans can hardly believe she’s here.
The U.S. writer-director is charting her journey from growing up in a cult-like church in Texas to premiering her debut feature, tackling teen dreams and sex work, in competition at the Edinburgh Film Festival on Friday. “[It was] this merry-go-round of feeling like an insane person,” she laughs to The Hollywood Reporter about trying to get Pretty Babies off the ground. “So it feels surreal to have this happen.”
In between the aforementioned Texan upbringing and coming to the Scottish capital as a feature filmmaker, Evans waited tables in L.A., spent her last $60 on a ticket to Cannes — prepared to sleep on a Croisette bench — and pitched her film to anyone in a suit and tie. She somehow got her script to Ashley Benson, Madelaine Petsch and producing powerhouse Christine Vachon, of Killer Films, all of whom swiftly signed on to this glitter-clad coming-of-age story.
Pretty Babies follows Marie (Gossip Girl‘s Emily Alyn Lind) and Luna (Sadie Stanley), two girls who, drawn by the seductive promise of the Hollywood they imagine from the old classics they idolize, embark on a road trip for which they are ill-equipped. That long-held American dream soon fractures as they get pulled into the dark underbelly of the sex industry by veterans Sapphire (Benson, also a producer) and Gemma (Petsch).
