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
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.
Even the European critics... They said Hostel is the smartest film they'd seen on capitalism and how it's gone too far.
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 started the film [Hostel Part II]with the girls in an art class and there's a nude male model. People think that women are objectified, well here you go! Here's a man being objectivized but now it's under the guise of art.
With Hostel II I thought I had a very, very strong female audience so I'm going to make a movie that's going to appeal to them. The guys will love it, they'll have their moments. But there'll be a lot more male nudity in this one. I have a lot of sausage in this one!
I'm from Boston, and in Boston, you are born with a baseball bat in your hand. And actually, most of the bats in Massachusetts are used off the field instead of on the field, and we all had baseball bats in our cars in high school.
I knew how to act and had studied acting and enjoyed it, but I'd never pushed myself to really perform as an actor, and create a role, and have the whole character's backstory.
Imagine trying to relive your worst break-up, your worst fight, the most painful death of a loved one, and just really relive it step by step, and bring it up and apply it to the scene you're in.
I was listening to music to kind of pump myself up and get psyched up, like I was listening to Iron Maiden and Misfits and Dead Kennedys, and it was like my '80s Massachusetts parking-lot heavy metal and Guns N' Roses.
I like movies like Mother's Day, where you watch it, and you've liked it for years as a horror movie.
Dawn Of The Dead is about how we're just a country cannibalizing itself, turning into one shopping mall, and everyone at the mall is just brain-dead, wandering around. Capitalism gone awry, and the worst parts of human nature coming out. All these different things that people read into the films that are all there, very strong anti-Bush sentiments that went into making those films. It's great. I like it when people get it the second or third time, when someone else points it out to them. They don't realize it's been there all along. Those are my favorite movies.
The censors were great. There's always back and forth. But it's Hostel 2, it's not Happy Feet 2. Everybody knows what Hostel is and people that are going to see it are going for more of what they loved in the original. No one is accidentally going to walk into it, no parent is accidentally going to take their child, and we're not pretending what it is in the advertising. We're saying it's very violent, it's very scary and a continuation of the first one.
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.
When I'm filming a kill scene [as a director], I just get happier and happier as we chop up body parts.