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Eli Roth
'Faux' Trailer Segment: Thanksgiving
Select Director Filmography:
• Hostel: Part II (2007 - post-production)
• Hostel
• Cabin Fever
Blood, guts, gore and nudity: that’s all Eli Roth wants to see in a horror movie. As the neophyte director of “Cabin Fever”, Roth is anything but shy, particularly in how he feels about the horror movie genre: “bad”, “ghettoized” and “neutered” are but a few less-colorful adjectives Roth has used to describe the current state of horror movies. His first feature, the much-anticipated indie gore-fest “Cabin Fever”, which benefited from “Blair Witch Project”-like hype on the Internet, was inspired in part by horror movies of the 70’s and early 80’s: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “Dawn of the Dead”, and “The Evil Dead.” Roth felt that Hollywood has forgotten what scares audiences out of their wits. Instead, according to Roth, they have relied too much on cheap villains, CGI and complete lack of nudity, resulting in a “castrated” film. This fueled Roth to make “Cabin Fever” with the hope of bringing the horror movie back to where it should be.
Born on April 18, 1972 in Boston, Massachusetts, Roth was fortunate enough to grow up in a household that not only encouraged artistic expression, but allowed him to watch the rated ‘R’ movies that his friends could not. He told his parents when 8 years-old that he wanted to be a film director. But instead of brushing him off, his parents—dad a psychoanalyst, mom an artist—were very supportive. They even went so far as to find movies that he should watch, if only because they wanted him to be serious about pursuing his dreams. Roth’s true inspiration for horror movies came not from films themselves, but from life experience.
At age 12, Roth developed toxic synovitis, an inflammation and swelling of the hip. When Roth was 17, he went to Russia and contracted an infection from a giardia parasite, but only after suffering the effects of mononucleosis. At 19, Roth was working on a farm in Iceland and caught a skin infection on his face. He woke up one morning to find chunks of skin and blood on his fingers after a night of scratching. Later that morning, he shaved chunks of dead skin off his face—the experience would later be the inspiration for the flesh-eating virus that attacks the characters in “Cabin Fever.” At 22, Roth woke up in bed, peeled back the sheets and found his legs black, rotting and bleeding—the symptoms of psoriasis.
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Between stints in bed and hospital, Roth managed to attend film school at New York University, where he won a Student Academy Award for his thesis film, “Restaurant Dogs” (1995). Roth then worked as a production assistant on Howard Stern’s “Private Parts” (1997), where he served as the star’s personal alarm clock. Roth had to wake Howard at 5 a.m., but he used his time beforehand to write “Cabin Fever.” Roth moved on to bigger and better things: in 1999, he co-created an animated series, “Chowdaheads”, for Mandalay Entertainment and WCW Wrestling; in 2000, Roth created the stop-motion animated series, “The Rotten Fruit”, animated out During his NYU days, Roth had the good fortune to meet director David Lynch (“Mulholland Drive”). The meeting turned into a solid work relationship, as Roth helped develop Lynch’s Website, among other things.
In order for Roth to get “Cabin Fever” off the ground—a round of unsuccessful pitch meetings left the project in doubt—Lynch offered to put his name on the project. Roth’s fortunes changed virtually overnight, as he was able to attract both financing and talent for the film. But his troubles didn’t end there: after filming began, Roth continually dealt with financing problems—one financier backed out at the last moment. Roth hit up friends and family for support, and scraped up enough to get the movie in the can. Then there was post-production costs to deal with: he needed another $600,000 to get it finished. Again, Roth had to beg and plead for money.
But in the end, all worked out: “Cabin Fever” debuted at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival, where it generated enough buzz to attract Lions Gate Films. The company purchased the film for distribution for “high seven figures.” Roth immediately formed his own company, Raw Nerve, an off-shoot of Greenestreet Films, which specializes in producing low-budget horror films with all the blood, gore and nudity Roth wants. Meanwhile, Roth got to work on his next low-budget horror flick, “Hostel” (2005), about two American college buddies (Jay Hernandez and Derek Richardson) lured to an out-of-the-way hostel in a Slovakian town rumored to house desperate, but beautiful Eastern European women. Following their wrong heads, both Americans get trapped in a truly sinister situation that plunges them into the dark recesses of human nature. “Hostel” debuted in the number one spot its opening weekend with a $19 million take, setting up the possibility of a sequel and ensuring Roth’s place as the go-to guy for horror.
Quoteables...
"Hype can be the best thing in the world, but too much of it can kill you. There's this weird balance between getting people excited to see the film, and not wanting to over-hype it to the point where they can't enjoy it because they've been told it's so great. "Cabin Fever" was definitely a victim of that, and people got really angry if it didn't live up to their expectations that they read on the Internet. The truth is, with movies like "Hostel" and "Cabin Fever," the Internet's our only shot. They don't have the big stars like "War of the Worlds," and they don't have the advertising dollars that these films do. Studios can spend $30-$40 million marketing a movie. How do you compete with that? You have to find a way to get fans to support your movie, and the Internet's the only way to reach them directly without a huge budget. However, the danger is that if you catch that hype wave and people are excited, you have crazy expectations to live up to. People's enjoyment of a movie is directly related to what their expectations of that movie are. If they heard "Cabin Fever" was some weirdo low budget scary/funny indie movie that got a distribution deal at a festival, they tended to like it much more than people who heard it was the second coming. The other danger is that people get sick of you - fast, and I know people out there are tired of reading about me."
"People don't enjoy violence in real life, but they love it in their movies. And I think a lot of studio horror movies don't want to offend anybody. If there's anything that's too far out there, they test it and if it offends people, they take it out. But Open Water, Wolf Creek, The Devil's Rejects -- these are movies made outside of the studio system, that don't have a happy ending. [The studios and critics] forget that that's what people are paying for -- to be terrified and disturbed."
"If I don't come home covered head to toe in fake blood then I haven't done my job as a horror director."
"I know your 2nd film can make or break you, because you're either a bona fide director or a one hit wonder."
"I am very lucky to have good people around me to bounce ideas off of. They bring out the best in you."
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