Eli Roth
Eli Roth
Eli Raphael Rothis an American film director, producer, writer and actor. He is known for directing the horror film Hostel and its sequel, Hostel: Part II. He is also known for his role as Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz in Quentin Tarantino's war film Inglourious Basterds for which he won both a SAG Awardand a BFCA Critic's Choice Award. Journalists have included him in a group of filmmakers dubbed the Splat Pack for their explicitly violent and bloody horror films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth18 April 1972
CityNewton, MA
CountryUnited States of America
I always feel that there's no violence in a movie - it's not real, it's a magic trick. Nobody is really dying. In fact, the people that die in my movies have gone on to become extremely successful!
The difference is in Hostel it's in the theatre - it's in public but it's in a private place. You have to actively make a choice to want to go see it. It's not being forced on anyone. Whereas 24 you can be flipping channels and it's right there in your living room. Anyone has access to that. But that just shows how mainstream it is and how people are seeing this stuff on YouTube. People are scared of it. This is a subject matter that everyone's talking about and everyone's thinking about, particularly in American culture.
You do need an outlet to release all of those fears. You build it up and then, when you go to a movie theater, it's the last place that it's socially acceptable to be terrified. It's saying that, for the next 90 minutes, you're allowed to be afraid and you're not a coward for feeling that way.
I've always been a fan of 3D, going back to movies in the '50s. I was part of the early '80s 3D craze, which was coming at you in Jaws 3D, so I've always wanted to make a 3D film.
In musical theater, if you have a song, it has to advance the plot. If you have a song in a musical and it does not advance the plot, it gets dropped.
Sometimes you have this tragedy which turns into an incredible opportunity.
When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence. I want nudity. I want sex and violence mixed together. What's wrong with that? Am I the only one? I don't think so.
Hopefully we'll get to a point where there are absolutely no restrictions on any kind of violence in movies. I'd love to see us get to a point where you can go to theaters and see movies unrated and that people know its not real violence. It's all pretend. It's all fake. It's just acting. It's just magic tricks.
Hopefully we'll get to a point where people realize movies don't cause violence. It just reflects the violence going on in the culture.
I'd love to see us get to a point where you can make a movie and not worry about the limits of the violence. Then I think they'd get so violent that people would get bored of it.
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I felt people responded to two things. One, obviously, is the gore and the scenes like the eye gauging.
Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or and people said: "Wait a minute, he's actually smart and he knows what he's doing!" I feel that with Hostel, any time you make a film like that it's going to illicit a strong reaction and you can't worry about that.
Quentin Tarantino faced the same backlash when his films came out until eventually people felt they were actually much smarter.