Interview: Eli Roth

Posted by Brian C. Gibson (brian@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 3, 2007

I’m back and just sat down with Eli Roth, director of Hostel IIm. This has been the most fancy interview conducted thus far. I was given access to use a Sony film crew to record our interview, and I even got a souvenir. The Sony crew handed me a digital copy of our interview that I do not have the equipment to play it back. It was fun though, without a doubt. Eli Roth is alot more calm and timid than I would have imagined, and had quite a bit to say about Hostel II, his projects and his passions.

The first thing I wanted to know from Eli was what he thought of all of his haters out there. “My films are love it, or hate it kinds of movies, and…if somebody hates a movie, generally their only outlet it the internet. So you get people posting stuff on message boards, and to me it’s just like kids in high school…I mean, who cares? I make my films for my fans.” I think that you have to respect a guy who doesn’t care about making his films accessible to everyone, but does care about catering to the audience he has created. He has created quite an audience in just three films.

Eli has experienced great success, both critical and commercial. “I’ve been able to make films on extremely low budgets, that have done ridiculously well all around the world.” What usually happens to directors though, is that hey become stuck within a particular style of film or genre. When asked what he thought about being a “horror director”, Eli said “It is interesting how whatever you are doing at the time, people peg you as that one thing…For me, I’m a director and I have lots of ideas. I love comedy and I love horror, and I like to direct stories and ideas that appeal to me.”

It has seemed though that only horror has appealed to Eli, so I wanted to know if he plans on doing anything different. “I always want to do something new and something different. I like doing things that is in the tradition of the things that I love, but I don’t want to repeat myself. I want to try and get better with every movie…I always want to challenge myself to try new things and different things, not be so dependent on gore in certain scenes and figure out how to use music. I really just want to make better movies.” I was curious though, with the buzz surrounding his spoof trailer from Grindhouse, titled Thanksgiving, could we see anything in the same vein? “I love Thanksgiving, and I think it was great as a trailer, but doing it as a feature film, I don’t know if it would ever live up to the trailer. I had talked with Edgar Wright and we kind of jokingly said if he does Don’t, then I’ll do Thanksgiving. But…unless I thought I could do a feature film that was better than the trailer, I wouldn’t do it.” With other projects in the air, the project I had the most interest in talking about was Trailer Trash. “I wanna have stuff that will be like Airplane or Kentucky Fried Movie or something that is crazy and insane, but I want to put my own new spin on it.”

As far as the Hostel II DVD release goes, Eli was very excited about his newest Sony release. “I am intimately involved in every aspect of the DVD, right up to the release and publicity of it. I’m very proud to say that on all four of the DVDs, whether it’s Cabin Fever, Hostel, Hostel: Special Edition or Hostel II, every DVD is completely filled and we couldn’t fit anymore information on it. I like to have a DVD that is so packed with stuff that you can’t possibly digest it all in one sitting. You’ve owned the DVD for ten years and you can keep going back to it and finding new stuff.” I wanted to know what feature makes this DVD a must own for fans and collectors. “Part two has the stuff that the ratings board made me cut. There is only going to be one definitive DVD for part two, that’s it. Its got all the deleted scenes, its got the photo gallery and it has the extra gore. It has the castration and the bloodbath, the way I intended for it to be seen.”

There you have it. Eli Roth will be trading in his blood bags for some canned laughs, and after watching Thanksgiving I’m sure he has what it takes to succeed in his new projects. I’ll be sure to pick up Hostel II on DVD, so look out for the review here on Film School Rejects.

Read more articles by Brian C. Gibson