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 want people to see my name on a movie, pay money and know they're going to be entertained for 90 minutes.
It's very flattering to feel like you actually helped create a sub-genre.
I've always wanted to make a big apocalypse movie. I love 28 Weeks Later, I think it's great but Cell is totally different. It's about people's dependence on technology, the collapse of society and watching everything fall apart. That's something I've always wanted to do, which I believe it can!
When I go see an R-rated horror movie, I want lots of violence.
I have the infinite galaxy from '2001 as my screensaver - so if I space out while I'm writing and it goes to screensaver, I can just stare off into the stars.
I need to eliminate 'like' from my vocabulary. I begin sentences with, 'That's seriously like ' I hear myself talking in this Los Angeles high-school student kind of way, and I hate it.
'Eraserhead' is a weird, horrible nightmare, and it doesn't narratively make sense. Stuff's happening, but you honestly feel like you're in a nightmare, and it has such disturbing imagery that it stays with you forever once you've seen it.
If someone gets up and walks out of the movie, it means it's really affected them.
A comedy can actually get funnier and funnier. Even though you know the joke, you enjoy it so much, it's the facial expression, you laugh. The laugh doesn't wear off. It could be with you for thirty years.
As a kid, my idols were Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson, and I get into crazy races with myself. Raimi was 21 when he made movies, and when I didn't get 'Cabin Fever' made that fast I thought I'd failed.
'Beatrice Cenci' was an amazing film. If it were released today it'd win Best Picture. It's so well done, it's so contemporary, and the filmmaking is so smart.
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.
'Cabin Fever' was very much inspired by 'The Thing.' It's really a perfect guy's horror movie: There's no love story, it's just straight-up horror. And it's so well-done. It moves at a slow pace, but it's really terrific.
If you don’t want to be scared in a horror film, don’t close your eyes. Close your ears.