Here's an interview with Eli Roth that was originally published in January 2008, I believe. It was for Fear Zone, a horror publication out of Manhattan and Buffalo, New York. Director of SLIME CITY, Greg Lamberson ran that one. A good person to have to edit your material. It was always a pleasure to deal with Lamberson and Fear Zone.
I remember being late getting back to the office to speak with the creator of the HOSTEL films. Luckily, Roth was running ten minutes behind me and I was silently relieved that I didn't have to apologize. I also remember he was at his home because a refrigerator repairman interrupted the interview for a few minutes.
This was the first time I spoke with Eli Roth and this one got a huge reaction from readers. I'm here to tell you that Eli Roth is/was hated. Even twelve tears later, this article was the one that generated the most responses by moviegoers. And I'm not exactly sure why that was the case. I'm not sure if people just didn't like the three films Roth had completed back then. Or if it was the fact they felt his success and popularity were undeserving based on CABIN FEVER and the two HOSTEL films. It was simply a reaction to the fact that I devoted print space and time to Eli Roth.
Over time, people seemed to ease up on him. Probably due to his performance in front of the camera for Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, where he portrayed Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz. He also eventually branched-out into different genres in 2018 with action films (DEATH WISH) and family-oriented fantasy/horror (THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS).
This was the first time I spoke with Eli Roth and this one got a huge reaction from readers. I'm here to tell you that Eli Roth is/was hated. Even twelve tears later, this article was the one that generated the most responses by moviegoers. And I'm not exactly sure why that was the case. I'm not sure if people just didn't like the three films Roth had completed back then. Or if it was the fact they felt his success and popularity were undeserving based on CABIN FEVER and the two HOSTEL films. It was simply a reaction to the fact that I devoted print space and time to Eli Roth.
Over time, people seemed to ease up on him. Probably due to his performance in front of the camera for Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, where he portrayed Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz. He also eventually branched-out into different genres in 2018 with action films (DEATH WISH) and family-oriented fantasy/horror (THE HOUSE WITH A CLOCK IN ITS WALLS).
CABIN FEVER went on to be the most successful horror film released in 2002 and, along with SAW, became the sole reason for Lion's Gate's financial success. Eli Roth truly became "THE" filmmaking talent to watch out for and from an independent view, it was honestly a deserving description of the young horror director.
The word around the office following CABIN FEVER was that Quentin Tarantino was set to produce Eli Roth's second journey as a director and that fact helped up the ante on excitement towards his second feature. HOSTEL was released and became a huge success story for the horror genre.
On the heels of the DVD release of HOSTEL 2, I was lucky enough to secure a quick conversation with Mr. Roth.
Eli Roth: I've been working on a project called TRAILER TRASH, which is going to be more of an expanded version of what I did for GRINDHOUSE. It was really inspired by the trailer I did for that film. I had so much fun doing that and I had a bunch of ideas for others. Instead of waiting for GRINDHOUSE 2, I just figured we'd do a whole movie of these and we'll call it TRAILER TRASH, something really silly and fun; totally absurd. So, I've been busy working on that. I'm planning on shooting it in the spring, so I'm just sort of figuring out the logistics of the production because I've got to shoot a bunch of fake trailers and make them all look like real movies. It's a bit of a challenge to figure out how to do it.
BL: Didn't the studio release GRINDHOUSE separately on DVD, minus all the trailers including the THANKSGIVING one you directed?
ER: Yes. They're planning to do a GRINDHOUSE double DVD at some point. I'm not sure when, but those guys have that figured out. I don't really know what the whole story is as far as their plans for releasing it, but it is true that they released them separately on DVD without the trailers. I think eventually there will be a GRINDHOUSE DVD that has both of the movies combined with the trailers on it.
ER: Well, with Raw Nerve the first movie we did was HOSTEL and then HOSTEL 2. Truthfully, I'm really focusing on directing now more than producing. If I'm going to produce anything it's only going to be movies that I direct from now on. I just feel like as much as I enjoy it there's only so much time that I have to do things and I really want to put all of my energy into projects that I direct myself.
ER: I've never spoken with H.G. Lewis. I'm a big fan of his, of course, but that was something the director of 2001 MANIACS, Tim Sullivan, had arranged prior to my getting involved in that film. As far as bypassing his films, I mean, that's always been the case with horror. Horror has always been treated like a second-class citizen and people don't treat horror films like real movies. If you make a horror movie, suddenly it's not a real film. They don't get considered for Oscar nominations and I think part of the problem is that for so long people just weren't putting a lot of effort into horror films. Horror never gets the respect it deserves and that's always the way it's been. People's natural reaction is to be horrified by something. If a scary movie effectively does its job people feel repulsed and very disturbed. They generally don't want to reward films like that.
BL: How do you feel about violence in film?
ER: I like violence in movies if it is appropriate to the story. I like it just as I enjoy anything else in film. I like it as well as drama in film, sex in film or comedy in film. To me, it's just another element of storytelling and there just happens to be a lot of stories out there that are very violent. The first few films I've told have been very violent stories. I grew up loving gore films, you know. The more violent the better, but I think it's like anything, sometimes you can feel like a filmmaker is trying to be shocking for shocking's sake and it actually becomes boring. It loses its power. I think it's like any element of a film, whether it's music or camera tricks, etc. The director really has to understand how and when to use violence to make it effective. You can't just put up violent images and expect it to be effective because they are violent.
BL: Do you feel it is possible to go too far with violence?
ER: No, not really. I think if you go too far it gets boring. It's still an image. It's just an image. It's make-up effects or a magic trick and it really doesn't matter what the image is. There's nothing where I go, "Gosh, they've really gone too far this time," because it's only a movie. You know that it's fake. I think that anything that takes you out of the story, for me, is too much. If you are suddenly too aware of the effect and you don't care about what happens next, then I think it just comes across as not as interesting. I don't get morally outraged at cinema violence because there's no violence you can put in a movie that's worse than what's happening in the real world.
ER: Not necessarily. I feel that it all depends on who's directing and there is actually a lot of things that matter. You can tell, generally from the beginning of the film, whether you are going to be watching a good movie or not. Also, whether or not you are interested in the characters and the story. I think that violence and blood, that's just another element in the storytelling. I don't think you can boil it down to any one thing that makes a film successful. The only thing that really matters is if the audience is into what happens next on the screen. If you are making a scary movie the audience has to be scared also or at least care about the characters and interested in what's going to happen to these characters next. That's the viewer's sense of jeopardy.
ER: It took six years of my life. It was impossible and I wrote it back when I was twenty-two. I didn't get it made until I was thirty and in between was years and years of actively raising the money to film it. We were eventually shut down by the union and they took all of our money. You know, people put up their houses to make that movie. We risked absolutely everything and I would have been completely ruined financially for the rest of my life, as would have all of the investors, and miraculously we got a huge sale at a festival. It went on to be the highest-grossing film from 2002 for Lions Gate and helped launch their new wave of horror. It was one of those things that were trial by fire. If I'd known how difficult and stressful it was going to be, I probably wouldn't have done it. The thing is, you can't know how difficult it's going to be. You just have to make yourself do it and then once you've gone too far, you can't stop. You have to find a way to make it work. It was extremely stressful and we never had the money... EVER. We were raising the money right through the sound mixing and editing of the film. I talk about it extensively on the CABIN FEVER DVD director's commentary.
ER: Well, I like films like YELLOW SUBMARINE and WILLY WONKA, kids movies that have a little bit of a darker edge. The Tim Burton films. Lately, I've been watching a bunch of old Italian films. Films like Vittorio DeSica's BICYCLE THIEVES and the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. There is this Fellini film called TOBY DAMMIT, which is a short film he made based on an Edgar Allen Poe short story and I've been watching that a lot lately. That's the kind of stuff I've been currently watching. I love those movies. I also enjoy Paul Thomas Anderson's films. So, I don't always just sit around watching horror movies. You can get tired of doing that.
ER: I've been a fan of Rick Hoffman's and he's a friend of my producer, Chris Briggs. Chris has known Rick for many years and it was actually his suggestion to cast Rick. We saved that role for the last few days of shooting because we hadn't cast it yet. There were a number of people we were considering, but Rick was perfect. I was really excited that he became available and we could get him. It was really all Chris' suggestion. He brought him in and Rick just nailed it. We knew that if we got the right person for the role the actor could potentially come in and just steal the whole movie. Rick is that guy. Rick is the type of actor who can appear in one scene of a film and steal the whole movie and you never forget him.
Many people tell me that, for them, his role and performance was the most disturbing thing in HOSTEL. The look on Rick Hoffman's face, having a character that is just so excited to kill somebody, was far more disturbing than any of the violence I put in the film. I also learned a huge lesson by doing that scene. You don't need music or lighting to make the scene scary. It's the situation that is scary and that scene is a perfect example where there is no on-screen violence. It's just two people in a room talking to each other and was filmed in daylight without any fancy camera work. There's nothing spooky or creepy about it. It's just the subject matter and the nature of the conversation that's disturbing. So, that's why in HOSTEL 2 I really tried to make that the model for the tone of that film.
ER: Yes, it's a very human feeling called xenophobia. I've experienced that with all of my films going back to CABIN FEVER. The whole we're not in Kansas any more sensation. I feel that everybody has had that experience of going to another place that's not their home where they are not secure, they don't know anybody and you need help. Suddenly, people are talking about you in a language that you don't understand and you don't know who to trust. It happens to everybody.
It happens right here in this country when people from the north drive to the south and vice versa. There are many, many stories that are kind of fish out of water stories. It's a very natural thing to both be afraid of other cultures and to be afraid of outsiders coming into your own culture. So, xenophobia was one of the things that I really wanted to explore. I've traveled a lot. I love going into other cultures by traveling. I've lived in France, Iceland, and most recently, Prague and if you are generally receptive to the other culture and you want to be a part of it to the extent where you make an attempt to learn a couple of phrases, people are very warm and receptive back to you. If you come in with an attitude that your culture is better than theirs, then it can get very scary, very quickly.
ER: I wish I had a simple explanation for it, but I've just always loved horror. When I was a kid it was before cable television. So, if a movie came to the theaters, like GATES OF HELL or MOTHER'S DAY, you'd see the ads in the newspaper, but then it was gone forever because it was never going to come to television.
I always wondered what it was about these movies that were so forbidden that we weren't allowed to see them. There was always some kid's older brother in the neighborhood that had seen the movie and you would get them to graphically describe all the kills for you. I remember one kid's older brother that had seen THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT and all he had to do was describe it to us. I just built it up in my mind. It was that forbidden thing I wasn't allowed to see and I just always loved horror films.
Now, thankfully, there's a whole wave of directors that are in power and we finally got to make our dream movies and the fans really responded. I feel like it's a new golden age of horror with directors like Neil Marshall, James Wan, Darren Bousman, Rob Zombie, and Alex Aja. These are directors who really, really care about making great horror movies. Now you see guys like Frank Darabont making horror films again. It's really exciting to see A-list directors making horror movies because that's what the genre has been missing. We need directors to embrace the genre, to love it, and really take it seriously so we can try to make great movies.
BL: Was it easier to get a horror film made in the eighties?
ER: I was a kid back then, so I can't really speak from experience. I can tell you that by talking with these directors, those masters of horror from that era, they say that it was much easier to make a movie and get it in theaters back then because there were so many different theater chains and theater bookers. There was also a whole drive-in circuit. The theaters weren't all multiplexes owned by corporations. Even in the nineties, there were like twenty different independent studios that you could go and take your film to. It was possible to get weirder, more offbeat movies made.
Now, The Weinstein Company and Lion's Gate are the only independents left. Everything else has been bought up and it's very competitive out there. Just look at HOSTEL 2, which got released up against PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN 3 and SHREK 3 and you are fighting for the same seats. It's an extremely, extremely competitive landscape. It is very difficult to get your film in cinemas and the DVD business is dying out. So, it's not quite what it used to be and it's all moving towards on-line. I just think it was a different time back then. I really can only speak from the era in which I've worked, but it's extremely difficult to not only make a film but to then get it into theaters is next to impossible. I have the utmost respect for anyone who can do that.
ER: It's amazing that whatever is Number One at the box office is bigger news than U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq. It makes me sick. Everybody, now with the Internet, has access to this information and people obsess over it, harp on it and everybody wants to be a part of it. It's the first time in our culture that fans have had direct access to the actors and stars through things like MySpace, Facebook, and various other websites. Before all of that, you had to sit down and write a letter to a fan club.
Back then, if the public did know how much money a film made it was usually something huge like Tim Burton's BATMAN. Now, it's on every news station, it's written about in daily newspapers and it's broadcast on morning radio reports. I think it's all part of the gossip culture in general that we've fostered in the last five years. Publications like Star magazine, US Weekly, and In Touch are extremely popular. We've become similar to the ways the British cultures obsess with gossip and tabloids. American culture seems to be obsessing over movie box office results. It's just incredible how people come up to me and... I don't know one other business where people will just come off the street and know exactly how much money someone makes and what their last business venture made. When my last film opened, people everywhere knew how much money I was making. It's kind of strange.
No, I just want to say that for me the greatest thing is that I feel so lucky that I've gotten to do what I've done so far. Every step along the way I've had that temptation to take some offers on a Hollywood studio film and even after CABIN FEVER, HOSTEL and HOSTEL 2, I've really kind of stuck to my guns to do my own thing and the fans have really supported me. I want to thank them because I wouldn't be able to have a choice on what films I wanted to do if the fans didn't come out and support my films, both in the theaters and on DVD. I consider it a privilege every time I get behind the camera to direct and I give it my all.
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