Eli Roth is one director who is so passionate about his craft that he’d almost risk life and limb to get his film in the can. When we first heard news that the Bear Jew was tackling a new cannibal epic and was braving the real-life perils of the jungle you couldn’t help but to be intrigued. Roth recently sat down with Empire Online to give some insight into the perils of making his upcoming cannibal film THE GREEN INFERNO, and we have snippets of the conversation below.
THE GREEN INFERNO sees student activists from comfy NYC travel to the remote forests of Peru to stage a protest but instead they discover a tribe of not-that-friendly cannibals. In order to make the film as realistic as possible, Roth and company traveled deep into the Amazon to some pretty harrowing locations.
“We went in the Amazon deeper than anyone has ever shot a movie before. I went so far up the river, we went to a village where they had no electricity, no running water, and they never before had seen a movie or television,” Roth explains. “We had to explain to them conceptually what a movie was, and we brought a television and a generator and we showed them CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST. They thought it was the funniest thing that they had ever seen, but we had to know whether they were down with it to let us in their village.”
As for what kind of dangers the cast and crew encountered, Roth had this to say: “Thank God no one got killed, but there were tarantulas, there were spider bites, there were snakes. It was insane. Everybody had to get de-parasited after we got back, but the footage was incredible.”
I love that Roth isn’t scared to get down and dirty (and potentially put his life on the line) to make the kind of movie that fans expect of him. THE GREEN INFERNO is currently being edited and eyeing a 2014 release.
You can read more from Roth on the making of THE GREEN INFERNO by visiting Empire Online right HERE.
Even the director couldn’t escape the wrath of THE GREEN INFERNO