INT: Eli Roth

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

After
the stunning success of his first feature film, CABIN FEVER, Eli
Roth could pretty much write his own ticket in

Hollywood

. For his follow-up, Roth
mulled over various studio projects before finally choosing to stick
with the proven formula of hot chicks and gore that catapulted him
to the Big Time three years ago. His
latest film, HOSTEL,
takes everything to a whole new level with its story of young
American travelers who stumble into a sadistic Slovakian underworld.

The
verbose filmmaker stopped by the Four Seasons in

Beverly Hills

a few weeks ago to talk about his experience making the movie.
He entered a roundtable room filled with horror journalists,
where the discussion revolved around the fascinating topic of
internet bestiality.

ELI
ROTH

Have
you ever seen a man f*cked to death by a horse?

A
man? No. Not a man f*cked
to death by a horse. I’ve seen a girl f*cking a horse, I’ve seen
two Japanese girls vomiting in each other’s mouths in a bathtub,
but I have never seen a man f*cked to death by a horse.

Did
you know you were gonna write this?

I
knew I was gonna write it. It was one of those things, after Cabin
Fever. Cabin Fever was this crazy ride, as most of you know.
It was all totally built through internet and word of mouth,
and we made it for a million and a half bucks, and it wound up doing
like over 100 million dollars. Not
that any of it went to me, mind you. About 4 dollars did, but
that’s cool. After that I had all this opportunity and I didn’t
know what I was going to do next. And I started writing this project
here and got this set up with this studio, and I kind of started
like 15 different things. You’re
completely on the outside, and then all of a sudden every door is
open, you wanna like start taking advantage of it.

But
then I realized it was like those magnetic dogs when you put their
noses together and they start spinning, like in 15 different
directions. I didn’t know what to do.
I was talking to Quentin (Tarantino) and Quentin loved Cabin
Fever. After he saw it he invited me to his house to watch movies.
We watched War of the Gargantuas, and Hell Night, and Blood and
Black Lace, Zombi. He was like, “Man, you gotta check out this
print of Zombi; it’s really cool.”
We would just geek out watching movies. And I said to
Quentin, “You know, I kind of just don’t know what to do now.”
I said, “I’m at this weird place where I am being offered to
direct studio movies, I have my own stuff that’s sort of
developing,” and he’s like, “Well, what ideas are you working
on?” I told him this and this and this…and I said, “Well, then
there’s this other thing…” and I told him the idea for Hostel
and he was like “Are you f*cking kidding me?

That’s
the sickest f*cking idea I have ever heard.” He told me “Eli,
you’ve got to do that. f*ck
it. Do it low budget.”
I have a horror company called Raw Nerve, and he was like,
“Do it with Raw Nerve, do it for like three million bucks or
something. Go to
Europe
and make it as sick as you want to make it. Make it f*cking
balls-out. This could be like, your Takashi Miike film. This could
be, like, a classic American horror movie.”
And I thought about it… There are very few people who…I
have a lot of experience making low budget movies. I know how to do
it. You know, Cabin Fever. I know I could learn and make a better
film. I said, “f*ck it. He’s right. I drove home that day and I
unplugged my phone and I just burned out the draft and I showed it
to Scott Spiegel and Boaz Yakin, who are my partners at Raw Nerve.

Scotty
wrote Evil Dead II and Boaz wrote and directed Fresh and Remember
the Titans and they loved it. They had great ideas. I sat down and
did another draft – this was all in the span of two weeks – and
I showed it to Quentin, and he was like, “This is f*cking awesome.
Let’s go through it.” And we went through the script. And he’s
like, “You know what? We’re gonna do a bullshit pass. I’m
gonna call bullshit where it feels like this could only happen in a
movie. If this is movie convenience or it’s not something that you
and I would do, then I am calling bullshit – “He can’t get out
of the chair like this, cut his f*cking fingers off.” “Well, I
wanna cut his hand, but then would he bleed to death?” “No, if
you cut half his hand he could probably still wiggle out.” You
know, that kind of stuff. So, we did like a whole pass, and he’s
like, “Oh, man, what if he’s got a f*cking bolt cutter and
he’s cutting off Yuki’s toes?” and I’m like, “Oh that’s
awesome, let’s put that in.”

So
we went through it and sort of did a reality pass on it, and it just
sort of seemed natural. And he’s like, “You know, I’d love to
be involved in this, and I’m like, “Yeah, it’d be so f*cking
fun.” So he was just great. So we shot in Prague while he was
doing a CSI episode, but he was really helpful in the editing room.
He came in the editing room and he’s like… You know, George
Folsey cut the movie with me. He was John Landis’s partner; he
produced American Werewolf in London, Blue Brothers, Trading places,
and he cut Animal House. He
edited a lot of blaxploitation movies that Quentin loved…so
Quentin had seen all his movies and Quentin came in the editing room
and said, “Well, what do you think of this, maybe, you know I
think you can cut this. You know, I think this is a good scare, but
what if you add some this to that?” He helped us trim it down.

But
honestly, it was his enthusiasm, his spark, that I was just like,
“What do I do? Why am I waiting for the perfect movie.” You
know, you get that fear of doing your second film, like, “Okay,
the first one did really really well, and I want to make sure this
one does well but I also want to do something that I’m proud of
that feels like a step forward. It just felt like the right next
movie.

Where
did hear about the story?

I’ll
tell you where it started. It started with a conversation with
Ain’t It Cool News’ Harry Knowles. Harry and I were talking
about sick stuff we’d seen on the Internet. And we’re talking
about, like I’d seen that site that the guy in Texas set up where
you could control a gun and hunt, like, lions and wild game, and
rare animals, on the internet. And the FBI had shut this guy down. I
think he claimed, his story was that, his legal defense was that he
was making it so handicapped people could hunt too; it was like, so f*cked
up.

But
I thought, “Jesus. Why wouldn’t they just put a human being in a
room?” and Harry said, “Well, actually I found something like
that,” and he sent me a link to a site where you could go to
Thailand and for ten thousand dollars, walk into a room and shoot
somebody in the head. And the site claimed that the person you were
killing had signed up for it, that part of the money would go to
their family and they were so broke and they were gonna die anyways
and they wanted to do this, they wanted to be killed for this
purpose, and that it gives you the thrill of taking another human
life. And we said, “Is this Bullshit? Is this real?”
It looked real. And we thought, “How could this possibly be
real?” But you know
what? It doesn’t matter. Whether this place exists or not is not
important. The point is that somebody built a website about it.

Somebody
else thought up, realized, and conceptualized, that there’s some
guy out there that’s so bored with money and drugs.
Hookers don’t do it, strip clubs… they can’t get off
from going to a hooker or strip club or doing drugs. They’re
looking for that next level of thrill, and that, I said, was real. I
know people like that. But that is very real, I know people like
that. But that is very real to me. I can just see someone who’s
so…money doesn’t mean anything, they’ve got all these things
and they’re just numb. They want to walk into a room and just kill
someone without any consequences. And I saw parallels between guys I
knew who would go to Europe or even go to Vegas and go, “Yeah,
we’re gonna go get hookers and do drugs,” or “We’re gonna go
to Amsterdam,” and it’s kind of this American thing of going
abroad and doing all these things you’re not supposed to do.

That’s
why I made Amsterdam purposefully look like an x-rated Disneyland
– the hookers, they’re a ride. It’s just another story.
They’re not interacting with another human being, they’re just
paying their money, they’re gonna go on…they’re on that path.
But what happens after twenty years from now? They would wind up
like these businessmen. The brothel in Amsterdam is kind of like
this weird mirror image of this; the slaughterhouse is a horrible,
hell version of that brothel. Josh walks up and down the hall; Jay
gets dragged down the hall. I just saw parallels in exploitation and
the value of life in other parts of the world and putting a price on
someone else’s life, it’s like,
“Ok, it’s 100 dollars an hour for this person’s life,
and you’re 25,000 dollars to this person, and to this kid?
You’re just a piece of bubble gum. That’s all you’re worth.”

Why
did you choose Jay Hernandez?

Jay
Hernandez, I think, is really underrated. Jay Hernandez is an
amazing actor. His career really started with Crazy/Beautiful, jump
started…the last few movies that Jay has done he’s been in a
really good movie like, The Rookie, Ladder 49, Friday Night Lights,
but he’s in an ensemble, wearing a uniform. And a lot of times
he’s got a helmet or a hat on. So you kind of don’t distinguish
him in those movies, even though he’s very good. In Ladder 49 he
got cut down to nothing. He read the (Hostel) script and he really
responded to it. I met
him and I thought, “This guy would be incredible. I’d be lucky
to get this guy.”

He
was such a good actor that he feels like a regular guy. I didn’t
want people who look like pretty boys or movie people. I wanted
people who felt like guys I went to college with, that I grew up
with, and that I know. The thing about Jay is like, he’s really
like a real guy. He has that quality, that very natural style of
acting. You don’t feel like he’s an actor, acting. He’s just
somebody who throws himself in the role. And what I also felt about
Jay was I really felt like he was willing to make himself
vulnerable. You know, a lot of those guys want to be macho and tough
all the time and they don’t want to sit there and be crying like a
baby when they’re about to die in a movie and Jay was willing to
do that and he did it really well in a way that you don’t go,
“Oh, that pussy.” I mean, you genuinely feel sorry for him. You
go, “f*ck yeah, I’d be doing the same thing.”

You
were looking for that Miike feel. Do you think that you could have
pushed it a little further?

Yeah…No,
it’s not that I want to reach a broader audience. I was really
looking at the story I was telling and who I was telling it for. I
think that Miike makes the greatest Miike movies ever, and there’s
one Miike and there’s no need to try to be Miike. I just want to
be the best me, not the best Miike. Sorry, that was lame. If
you’re really really looking at it, I mean, obviously it’s
really heavily influenced by Audition, and The Vanishing. You know
if Cabin fever was totally my response to missing American horror of
the seventies and early eighties, which that film is.

With
Cabin Fever I started going to the Sitges film festival, Brussels,
and seeing Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Audition, and all of a
sudden I’m seeing all the good stuff that of course never makes it
into theaters over here. And that’s when I was like, “Holy Shit,
South Korea, this is where it’s at.” Like what the f*ck is going
on there, in Japan…they’re making these balls-out movies that
are just so disturbing. But you know, I didn’t want to imitate
shots like in Cabin Fever. I was like “This is my Texas Chainsaw
Massacre shot” and “This is my shot from The Thing.” I said,
“You know, it’s time for me to stand on my own. I can be
influenced by these movies, but I am not going to watch movies and
take shots. Just say, go with my gut instinct and if this is
what’s in my head, and this is how I’m gnna shoot it.
I can hear the music, this is the feel, and I just see it
this way, and just kind of going with that.

I
thought, you know, I don’t want to try to make it so violent just
for the sake of that. I wanted people to come out and say yeah, that
was sick and f*cked up, but it still has to be an R-rated film, to
get released, and that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t feel like
there was any need to try to make Ichi the Killer 2. That’s what
Miike does, and let those guys do that. I kinda wanted to make
something that felt influenced by that but was still an American
movie.

How
did you go about establishing the tone in the first half of the
film? (Minor spoilers ahead)

I
made a conscious decision not to make it a scary horror movie from
minute one. We had the creepy title sequence, but I wanted the
audience to go on a trip with the guys. I wanted them to be there in
Amsterdam having fun. And then they get lured in and kind of seduced
into going to Slovakia the way the guys do. And they kinda get lured
in, lulled in. “Wow, this place is Valhalla. And then they f*cking
pay the price for it. That’s what I love about Audition, that the
guy is so sexist and is kind of unaware of it. You know these guys,
the way they’re looking at women, the way they’re treating women
… I very deliberately made Jay Hernandez unlikable in that first
half, the way he’s like, “Aww that bitch is a f*cking hog,”
but he doesn’t even realize it.

Like,
it’s kind of the moment where he goes back to rescue Kana that you
actually start to like him…while he’s getting tortured you’re
like, “Yeah, that f*cker, he kind of deserves it, he’s a
dick!” and I wanted to make a movie that was like a slow burn kind
of horror film. I love Audition, where there’s all the build up to
the last ten minutes, and then it’s just horrifying. And I wanted
to half that, like the first half…it starts out fun. I know
that’s gonna throw people, but hopefully they’re interested
enough in the story and like the characters enough to go along with
the ride. And if they pay that money for the ticket then they
probably will, and I think it’s certainly, hopefully, it gets
people to feel like it delivers at the end. But I felt like, if you
start off the movie with people’s fingers getting cut off and eyes
getting cut out, then for 45 minutes into it, you’re changing the
channel already; you’re just bored.

So
I really wanted to have something that would keep people guessing,
that would keep them off guard, where they would really not know
where it was going. Cause everybody sees horror movies ten steps
ahead now, everybody has seen everything, so I like a movie where
it’s like, “Oh this wasn’t what I expected,” or “Oh,
that’s weird,” or “Oh, what’s going on with this guy,” and
the “Why, and what the f*ck’s this all about? This guy is like,
touching the other guy…” I wanted to have it be, you know, it
starts off colorful and light, with controlled camera work.
Once Olli disappears, then the color starts to drain away,
and by the end it’s like very rough, hand-held camera work and
it’s basically black, ashen, and just…the color of blood.

How
did you find the babes?

The
babes. We had casting
sessions in Prague. For the two main girls, I’d say out of 400
girls who auditioned, nobody came close to Barbara (Nedeljakova),
who played Natalya, the brunette.
She walked in the room and she was like a young Monica
Bellucci. That quality of Louise Schneider, one of those foreign
girls that are from another era, that are just…that doesn’t look
like the typical Los Angeles beauty.
I didn’t want the fake tits. I wanted someone that had that
look that looks like they are from another world. And when she read
the scene she completely understood the scene and that scene where
she’s manipulating Jay and kind of f*cking with him in the bar,
you don’t know if she’s on drugs or if she doesn’t really
understand, or … she’s just looking him in the eye and f*cking
with him. She was really really terrifying. Nobody came close to
her.

But
that was one of the great things about getting to shoot in the Czech
republic, was getting to work with these actors like Jan (Vlasak),
who played the Dutch businessman, we called him Hannibal Czechtor,
he was a fresh actor from the Czech Republic.
He usually only does Shakespeare.
He very rarely does film and he just decided to do this, and
all of a sudden there’s this guy who seems like a nice guy who’s
doing these terrible things and he’s got those piercing eyes. That
was what was so fun about shooting there. You know, most people who
shoot in Prague will shoot it for America. So they’ll have someone
who will be waiter #3 and they’ll hire them and they’ll dub
their voice, so it looks like America…I wrote something that could
incorporate that where you could get actors acting at the top of
their game and not trying to fake their accent or hide it.

What
about the Oli character?

Oli
the Icelander. You know, I love Iceland. I lived there when I was
19. It’s funny, because Iceland inspired Cabin Fever, and I went
there with Cabin Fever and met this guy Eythor, who was one of the
funniest guys I had ever met. And
we went out and he was like insane, and I had never met anyone like
him, and I thought, “This guy has to be in a movie.” He does
Iron Man competitions, he’s been on televisions, he has
businesses, he’s just like, this fascinating character.
I remember the first week I went to Iceland I was 19, I went
to some horse show and everyone was drunk and everyone was going
crazy, and I was just standing back, watching a bunch of drunken
people going nuts and I was like, “These people are awesome!”
And Icelanders aren’t in movies.

You
don’t see an Icelandic character. So I figured, you know what? I
can take 1100 years of Icelandic culture and f*cking flush it down
the toilet in 90 minutes. Because I will make everybody think that
everyone from Iceland is like this guy. Bjork is fine. She’s had a
god run, but it’s time for her to step aside. I think Eythor
should be the most famous person in the world from Iceland. I know
Bjork is there – we
saw her when we were there – and she’s perfectly nice, but she
didn’t strike me as the people that I’ve met in Iceland as a
typical Icelander. Whereas Eythor, that’s what they’re like.
That’s what I found that they’re like.

Do
you have any plans to get back to studio projects?

It’s
interesting. After Cabin Fever I had all these studio things that I
started setting up. But now I’m spoiled. I have done two movies in
a row that I got to write, produce, direct, completely control, and
was involved in the marketing of the movies and the poster ideas. It
depends what project it is. Obviously if someone came up to me and
said “We want you to
do Indiana Jones 4” or even Porky’s 4, I’d be like, “All
right, great.” I kinda feel like, if this movie does well, it kind
of reinforces my confidence that maybe I should just follow my own
ideas. And maybe, if I keep going on this path, I could eventually
wind up like Quentin or Robert Rodriguez, who get to make movies for
40-50 million dollars budget level, they’re completely controlled
and they do it their own way, and you know, make’em in your
backyard. That’s how I’d like to do it. So I truthfully don’t
know. But after this movie I am spoiled. It’s making me think
twice about how I want to do everything in the future.

Questions? Comments? Manifestos? Send them to me at
[email protected].