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!
Possession and exorcism is something that's in every religion and every culture. It's a real primal fear: Is the body a vessel for our spirits? What happens if something else takes over it? Where does the spirit go?
The film, 'Aftershock,' for me is really about how the minor problems in life that we think are so major ultimately mean nothing when a tragedy happens, when a real problem happens.
For the fee of $10,000, anyone could be escorted to a room, handed a loaded gun and offered another human to kill. The concept made me nauseous. But it also felt real, and rang bells with my more cynical side.
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.
I want an iPhone 5, someone said something nasty on twitter, or my boyfriend isn't texting me back, like whatever the thing is that seems so major in your life, when a real disaster hits you suddenly strips it all away and you see what's really important and who you really are.
There's a crazy, false notion that audiences are not patient or will not watch a story, that you have to put in a scare every ten minutes. But I always thought that was insane.
Right now we're at war, and then you have Hurricane Katrina, where there are people on roofs screaming for help. I have this feeling that civilization could collapse, and that if you go overseas, you could get killed, that you could be in the middle of nowhere, and that someone could kill you and no one would find you. This film is also about the dark side of human nature. Everyone's life has a price. I want the audience to feel guilty. I want them to feel sick to their stomach, but by the end they're screaming for blood. Everyone has this evil within them.
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.
You know, the dirty secret in the Director's Guild is that the average life expectancy of Director's Guild members is 57 years old. The stress level is so high and directors are generally really out of shape, cause they sit in the chair and they eat craft service.
What I've always thought I would do is make a bunch of movies and then stop to teach for awhile. And then just teach at film schools - you know, teach children.
When you make a film for a million and a half dollars and it opens at 20 million, the next question out of everyone's mouth is, 'When's the next one, when's the next one, when's the next one?'
Some disaster movies look like you're watching someone else play video games. They're fun but it's not real.
Horror movies are the best date movies. There's no wondering, 'When do I put my arm around her?'