INT: Eli Roth

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

The Arrow
interviews Eli Roth

JoBlo
and I were lucky enough to chit-chat with writer/director and all
around kool kat Eli Roth at the latest Fangoria
Weekend of Horrors Convention. Eli
made quite a splash on the horror scene with the incredibly fun
“Cabin Fever” and we prodded the man hardcore about the
upcoming Cabin Fever DVD released on
January 20th
and his future horror (and non genre) projects. Ladies and gentlemen…I give you 
the swell chap,
the madman, the Kaufbird in the flesh…I give you The
Roth!

INTERVIEW WITH ELI ROTH – PART I (SATURDAY, JANUARY 10,
2004)

JoBlo and I walked into Eli’s Hotel room and
started chit-chatting about horror from the get-go. My kind of bla-bla
session! Here we go!

ELI: You get some good shit
today?

ARROW: You mean in terms of content?

ELI: In terms of toys and
stuff like that.

ARROW: Actually, I’m looking for PERFECT BLUE
and I can’t find it. Ever heard of it?

ELI: PERFECT BLUE?

ARROW: Yeah, it’s kind of David
Lynch-ish.
It’s a manga.

ELI: I don’t know it.

ARROW: You should definitely check it out. I
heard that it’s the shit. I’m also looking for THE CARD DEALER,
Argento’s latest.

ELI: It just opened in Rome
today. I actually heard that it was awful. Someone literally emailed
from Rome today and said “I’m going to see it in one hour.”

ARROW: Oh yeah? I’m looking forward to seeing
it though, I’m a big Argento fan.

ELI: Yeah, as am I. Fulci
is actually my favorite.

ARROW: I’m still a cherry on Fulci. I saw GATES OF HELL, ZOMBIE…I
started dabbling.

ELI: You gotta see THE
BEYOND, NEW YORK RIPPER… I mean, they’re a certain type of movie. Lots
of zooms, lots of elbow patches, lots of beards…

From here on out, the
official interview began and a lot of
what Eli shared with us was “stream of consciousness” type stuff, so
we’ve excised our lame comments and left only the man’s many thoughts
for your reading pleasure.

”I’M GONNA MAKE A FULCI
MOVIE!”

I’m gonna make a Fulci
movie. A Fulci style movie. I’m gonna shoot it will all-Italian actors
and maybe get a soap star to play the lead, dub everybody’s voices,
shoot the exteriors in New York and shoot interiors in Rome. That’s
how they did it. They would shoot all of the interiors in Rome and
then do a week of exteriors in New York. Like in INFERNO, that
building in Manhattan was like (gestures “huge”) and I’m like “What
kind of fuckin’ universe is that?”

IS THE MOVIE WORLD NOW
YOUR OYSTER?

It’s weird because I’ve got
“carte blanche”, but within reason. If I wanted to make a million and
a half, two million dollar horror movie, I would go nuts and make it
as weird as I want. Really fucked up, which is great. But I don’t have
“carte blanche” with the studio movies yet. Like the movie that I’m
writing with Rich Kelly (DONNIE DARKO) called THE BOX, that’s a film
over which we’ve got total control. We have a budget, it has to be
rated R and it has to be an hour and fifty minutes or under two hours,
a certain limit. So as long as I’m within those parameters, I can go
nuts. But the more expensive your movie gets, like a studio movie, the
less shit you can put in it and the less control you have. So I’m not
at the point like a Peter Jackson. I’m at a point where I’m getting
sent a lot of movies that are $10-15 million dollars studio horror
movies, and most of the scripts are so bad that I don’t even make it
past page 10. But if I wanted to have “carte blanche”, anything that’s
$5 million dollars and under, I probably could.

IF YOU LOST IT ALL?

Everything I’ve always
done, I’ve always written it, raised the money, shot it myself, cut
it, I mean…I learned production, so I know how to make a movie, unlike
some other directors who are dependent on other people to do it. I now
have investors—I mean, worse case scenario, I can always go back to my
investors. Raising money is no longer a problem, in that case.
Nowadays, I even have a company through which I can do that, RAW
NERVE, if I wanted to make a RAW NERVE movie.

TARANTINO, OTHERS’
ADVICE ABOUT ROTH’S FUTURE

Here’s what it is. I’ve
talked to a lot of horror directors about this, like Tobe Hooper, Don
Coscarelli, everybody, even Tarantino and asked them “What do you do?”
I mean, do you just sign up to a bunch of movies and they’re like,
it’s a tough balance because you want to strike while the iron’s hot,
and you want to have a lot of things going, but you don’t want to have
too many things going. When people think you’re attached to
everything, they don’t take anything seriously. Kimberly Peirce did
BOYS DON’T CRY and it was such a huge success, but she hasn’t made a
movie since then. So, you don’t want to end up like that. Or you look
at someone like Jim Gillespie, who did I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST
SUMMER, but then rushed into D-TOX, which at the time, was a $60
million movie with Imagine Entertainment (Ron Howard/Brian Grazer’s
company) producing. He didn’t know that eventually they were gonna
pull their names off it, Stallone was gonna re-cut it and it get
released as EYE SEE YOU, straight to video. He’s in what’s called
“director jam”, where you can’t get a job.

BALLS-OUT NC-17
ULTRA-VIOLENT HORROR MOVIES!

So what I’ve done is I’ve
found an array of projects that I want to be involved in, like there’s
RAW NERVE stuff so that I could keep producing balls-out NC-17
ultra-violent horror movies. That way, if I want to direct one, fine,
but otherwise, at least I’m helping my friends get their movies made
and I’m helping veteran directors get their movies made with control
that the studios will no longer give them.

MORE PROJECTS: THE
JERSEY DEVIL AND DRAWN

I just sold a project to
Dark Horse Comics. I’m gonna write graphic novel, which I’ve always
wanted to do. It’s gonna be about the Jersey Devil called “The Jersey
Devil”, which we’d also like to turn into a film. Then there’s this
movie DRAWN. Certain movies take a long time. DRAWN has to be one of
the scariest things that I’ve ever read. I didn’t write it, Rand
Ravich wrote it. It’s the scariest, most disturbing…it’s like THE
EXORCIST and THE SHINING, that level of fucked up. He wrote and
directed THE ASTRONAUT’S WIFE. That’s a film that sort of got taken
away by the studio. Rand is a really, really good writer, but there’s
not any work out there that’s truly representative of his writing
pallet. He either got fucked by the studio, or the movie got made but
got screwed up by the director, got the wrong person in it and turned
out to be something other than what he wrote.

DID ELI ROTH ALMOST
DIRECT DAWN OF THE DEAD?

I want to do another horror
movie but…I love CABIN FEVER type, weird, fucked-up, funny and scary,
but I don’t want to keep repeating myself. I want to try other stuff
and experiment with more straight-down-the-middle scary and I’m also
doing a teen comedy for Universal. So you can’t really get involved
with too many projects, but you want to have a lot of balls in the
air. And you never know which one is gonna go. Everyone always says
that it’s the thing that you’re not planning, that comes out of left
field. For the remake of DAWN OF THE DEAD, it was down to me and Zack
Snyder and they went with Zack Snyder. And Zack is great, I mean, I
hear that it’s awesome. But there are a lot of situations like that.
Actually, that was before CABIN FEVER came out, where now it’s
generally between me and 2-3 other guys. It’s really with who the
studio is most comfortable with going, who they think is going to be
the best. There are certain movies where I’m like, “Oh my God, I would
kill to be on that movie”, and you kind of put your name in the hat
and others where you just sort of go with it.

WHAT’S UP WITH YOU AND
DONNIE DARKO’S RICHARD KELLY?

In regards to the thing
with Rich Kelly, the money is there. We have total control…we just
have to finish the script. Off DONNIE DARKO, every A-list director
wants Rich to write for them. He just wrote one for Jonathan Mostow, a
horror movie, scary as fuck, called HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET. He
wrote one for Darren Aronofsky that Leonardo DiCaprio is going to star
in. He’s writing movies for Tony Scott and they’re like “We want that
guy!” And I’ve been doing press all over the world. So we’re just
trying to find the time to finish that. So it’ll be either that one or
DRAWN, either one of which can go this summer, but it will also depend
on casting, other stuff. The script that I read for DRAWN is like THE
SHINING, THE EXORCIST…a real dark, fucked-up movie about the
apocalypse. I was like “This is awesome.” I never thought that I would
ever direct someone else’s script, I thought I have so many ideas of
my own and I want to do them all, but then you read something and
somehow it just resonates with you. You totally fuckin’ get it and are
on the same wavelength. So that’s how I felt with this.

ELI ROTH DOES PORKY’S!?!?

And then there’s SCAVENGER
HUNT (the aforementioned Universal teen comedy) which is my first
“studio movie”, like a PORKY’S, THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN, balls-out
teen comedy. I mean, I wanna pack as much nudity and fucked up shit in
there. I love JOYSTICKS, anytime ZAPPED is on, I watch it. I love 80s
telekinesis movies with monkeys. I love dumb 80s comedies, I think
they’re great. THE LAST AMERICAN VIRGIN is probably my favorite. I’m
writing that one, in fact, I just turned in my first draft, got some
notes and just handed in my second draft. They want to make that this
year. My goal is to do either that one or DRAWN…either of those two
films. I’ll also write THE JERSEY DEVIL, but I think it takes up to
6-8 months just to get the artwork in and get the graphic novel made,
so I can turn in a draft for that in April. And then, the movie won’t
be out for another year.

WHO WANTS A R-RATED
HORROR MOVIE?

We made CABIN FEVER for
about $1.5 million dollars and now it’s closing in on about $30
million worldwide, and it hasn’t even opened in France or Germany, so
it’s showing a lot of filmmakers that a $1.5 million dollar horror
movie is still a valuable product. Don Mancini called me (the creator
of the CHILD’S PLAY series) after our $8 million+ opening weekend,
because everyone saw how we made 7 times our budget on the opening
weekend alone. He said that Universal called him regarding SEED OF
CHUCKY and was like, “Let’s go, let’s get into production in four
months and let’s start shooting.” He was like, first it was FREDDY VS
JASON, then it was JEEPERS CREEPERS 2, but then CABIN FEVER
especially, because there were no stars in that movie. Lions Gate took
a big chance, but it wound up being their #1 and #2 movie, along with
HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES. 28 DAYS LATER was the other big one, of course.
But before those movies, they were all like “Who wants a R-rated
horror movie?”, but this has been the year for R-rated horror movies.
Now they’re all starving for R-rated horror, which is just great
because for so long it was, “No, it’s gotta be PG-13, it’s gotta be
PG-13. The lead actor has to live until the end because we need them
for the sequel. No nudity. No tits and ass.”

ROTH LIKES ASSRAPE?

I remember meeting Stan
Winston at this “Masters of Horror” thing, to which I was invited
along with Rob Zombie, where we were like “masters of horror”,
although we felt more “apprentices” obviously. But I was like, “Dude,
what happened with WRONG TURN?” and he goes “In the original script,
they take the kids, they kill them and they sodomize the corpses.” And
I’m like, “Why was that not in the movie? Why was there no
corpse-raping? I want to see those corpses get ass-raped!” And he
goes, “You and me both, but the studio would absolutely not allow it.”
He said that everything that I was talking about was in the original
script and that’s what they wanted to do, but the studio wouldn’t do
it. I was like, “Dude, you should have made it for a million and a
half, not fifteen million, and you should’ve just fuckin’ gone for
it.” They had all that money, but they were handcuffed.

HORROR MOVIES = PORN?

People really think that
horror is one step away from pornography. That if you make a horror
film, it’s like making a porn movie. And it’s not art, there’s nothing
artistic about it. It’s such bullshit. If you look at the
budget-per-gross, CABIN FEVER is the most profitable horror movie
since THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the most profit turning independent
film this year. LOST IN TRANSLATION made 9-10 times its money back,
BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM made about 11 times and we’re like at about 14-15
times our money back. And people are like, “But that’s not an
independent film” and I’m like, “I made that movie by borrowing money
and putting it on credit cards and then sold it to a distributor and
just because it got a wide release, just because it’s horror, it
doesn’t count?”

THE EXORCIST =
THEOLOGICAL THRILLER?

Everybody like horror
movies. In the 70s, in the United States, it was like that. You had
Spielberg, William Friedkin, Ridley Scott, Philip Kaufman…they were
all making horror movies. Stanley Kubrick. DePalma. It was like “this
thing”…everybody was making horror movies. It was the thing to do.
Nowadays, they don’t even call it “horror movies” anymore, they call
them “psychological thrillers”. Did you know that a New Line press
release went out that said that you are not allowed to call THE TEXAS
CHAINSAW MASSACRE a “horror movie”? It’s a thriller. “Psychological
thriller” is the one that they made up for THE SIXTH SENSE. And for 28
DAYS LATER, Fox called it a “viral thriller”. I mean, if THE EXORCIST
came out today, it would be called a “theological thriller”.

The stereotype is that if
it’s a smart movie, it’s a thriller. If it’s dumb…it’s a horror movie.
Like HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES, they would say, “That’s a dumb horror
movie.” And I’ve been in rooms with these executives, like with DRAWN
and they’re like, “We don’t understand, it’s a horror movie, but it’s
so well-written?” and I’m like, “Yeaaaaaaaaah?” And actors are like,
“We don’t want to be in a horror movie!” Ever since the slasher movies
from the 80s, it’s been like that. The only way that it’s gonna change
is with directors like Guillermo del Toro, directors that are psyched
to be in the horror section, that are honored to do it and are proud
to say that they direct horror movies. The thing that’s happened is
that a lot of these guys like Carpenter, Romero, people will say “Oh,
they’re just horror directors, they don’t get other movies.”

ONLINE COMMUNITY: GOOD
OR BAD?

The thing about the online
community that’s so great is that it gives a voice to the people, the
independent filmmaker and levels the playing field. If you’re making
DAWN OF THE DEAD, you want fans to support you, but they’re going to
spend $25 million advertising that movie anyway. But if you don’t have
any money, you barely have enough money to put your photos up on the
IMDB page, how do you compete? How do you get attention, recognition,
other people psyched to see your film?

HOW ONLINE HELPED ME
SELL CABIN FEVER

I remember when we were at
the Toronto Film Festival, there were 343 movies and we were dead
last. It’s a 12-day festival, but a lot of people leave after day 7,
the buyers. So I was worried about how we were going to get people to
stay and spoke to Harry from AICN, and he wrote this thing where he
said, “You know what, I haven’t seen this movie, I’ve only spoken to
this guy on the phone and he clearly knows his shit, and Howard Berger
wrote this letter and vouched for him and I’m just going on a hunch
here, but I think the film that many people will be talking about at
the festival will be CABIN FEVER and if you’re there to buy movies,
change your flight and stay for CABIN FEVER”.

And because he wrote that,
and because distributors are on the Internet, they’re on AICN, they’re
on JoBlo, they read all of it…they go to see what movies you guys are
talking about, because if you guys support it, it means that you’ll go
see it and it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, and makes them feel
more comfortable putting more money into it. Because many of them need
to justify their jobs. Which is why so many sequels and remakes get
made. Because if it fails, they can always say, “Well, what do you
want? The first one did well. How could you know? How could you know
that TOMB RAIDER 2 would be bad?” (sarcastic) So because of Harry
talking about it, it got the sale and it got everybody talking. Which
is why I think it’s so important to support each other. And not fuckin’
bash shit before it opens. I mean, it’s fine to hate a movie.
Everybody can hate CABIN FEVER all they want. But don’t fuckin’ trash
shit before you even see it…I mean, give it a chance. It’s somebody’s
work. Especially horror movies, I mean…we have it tough enough.

MPAA = DEVIL INCARNATE?

MPAA. We can’t fuckin’ put
shit in a trailer anymore. You make a horror movie, you can’t put
anything in it. You can’t have blood, you can’t have swearing, you
can’t have nudity…nothing. It has to be able to play with FINDING
NEMO.
No red-band trailers. So where’s the only place for them? The
Internet. Theaters will no longer accept the red-band trailer. The
trailer with the head blowing up in SCANNERS, it would never happen
today. They rate your fuckin’ poster. They rate your website now. So
we need to go to places like JoBlo and leak it through them, then the
MPAA can’t go after us. They’ll revoke your rating. It’s so stupid,
such weird censorship.

CABIN FEVER
MIS-MARKETED?

I felt like CABIN FEVER was
mis-marketed. I understand why they sold it as a “scary movie”, but I
wish they had told people that is was funny as well. I wish they had
said that it’s fuckin’ scary and funny like EVIL DEAD 2. But
they didn’t, they said it was 28 DAYS LATER. And a lot of people went
in expecting 28 DAYS LATER and it’s not. They cut it like 28 DAYS
LATER. I understand why they did that, but at the same time, you gotta
tell people it’s funny too otherwise they’re gonna be confused. So a
lot of people went in there going, “What’s this ass-fingering and gay
stuff…” and other people who were open to it, that had heard that it
was weird and fucked up were like, “Yeaaah”, screaming and cheering,
like a rollercoaster.

“YOUR SITES ARE FUN, I
GOT ADDICTED. I’LL SURF JOBLO OR THE ARROW…ALL THAT SHIT”

For the Internet, at least
I can get my voice out there. I can do interviews on your site and be
like, you know what, “It’s a fuckin’ crazy rollercoaster ride, you go
to get laid, bring your girlfriend and she gets scared…” It’s also a
great place for guys like me to build a fanbase. To connect with fans
on a personal level where you’re like one-on-one. You can’t depend on
one magazine article, because they might not read that. Where if you
do something on a specific website, it just get linked to all the
other websites. As soon as something’s up on Creature Corner or JoBlo,
it’s on Dark Horizons, it’s here and there. I love the Internet. I go
on the sites all the time. Your sites are fun, I got addicted. I’ll
surf JoBlo or the Arrow…all that shit. And then Creature Corner, Dark
Horizons, Ain’t it Cool…I like that stuff, it’s fun. I read shit about
me in there and I’m like, “I didn’t know that I was doing that?”

CABIN FEVER SEQUEL?

Contractually, when we sold
the movie, I told them that I would write a treatment and I have the
first right to do it, if I want. So I wrote and turned in the
treatment. Now, Lions Gate Films just bought Artisan, so there’s this
whole change-over going on, all kinds of shit going on, so they
basically have to read it and say if they want to do it or not. And
it’s really fuckin’ weird. I feel like if people want to see CABIN
FEVER 2, they’re going because they want the weirdness. I’d want it to
be all about Deputy Winston and the various creatures that are in his
head. I’d love to bring Ryder Strong back as well. Ryder’s so fuckin’
cool. He’s a cool, easy-going dude. They just have to trust me that it
would work. It’s really fucked up, but I also have a great way to tie
everything up and bring people back and make it fucked up, but not
cheesy. But it’s a long way away. I don’t want to make CABIN FEVER 2
my next film.

I’ve been living the first
one forever. I wrote it when I was about 22 or 23, and I’d write a
different kind of movie now. Here’s the thing; they’ll probably want
to make it soon, but I want to wait. I think that Raimi went away from
EVIL DEAD, then came back with EVIL DEAD 2. I want to let it sink in,
think about it for a while, see what people respond to, see what
catches on. There are certain phrases for certain movies that have
leaked into popular culture. You can’t predict it. Certain things from
OFFICE SPACE, for example, everybody loves the “Yeaaaaaah” or
CADDYSHACK with “I want a hamburger…you’ll get nothing and like it!!”
I don’t think that they thought that would be the marquee line. So you
kind of want to see what sticks and then build on that.

Find the KaufBird on the Cabin
Fever DVD and have a blast!
I pissed my pants laughing, changed to another pair, watched the bird
again and ruined that pair too!

And there you have it! I’d like to thank Eli for his time, for his
easy-going demeanor and for the freakin’ ride that was “Cabin Fever”.
I’m happy that this guy is on our side and personally, an
inspiration in terms of him being a horror fanboy who graduated to
making his own films in the big leagues. In my opinion, he is one of today’s
newest filmmakers with the most potential in terms of what he could
bring to the “good fight” i.e. respecting the genre and putting out
“real” horror flicks. Keep it up,
Soldier Rothman! Your tour of duty isn’t up yet!