Eli Roth - Hostel

Quentin said “That’s really cool. I got to do that.”

I definitely will. We’re supposed to go to Iceland for New Years.

Yeah it should be really fun. We were just there like a month ago at the Icelandic Film Festival for the world premiere. It was the first time we had a finished print of the movie. I was also there for New Years last year. I met Eythor [Gudjonsson] when I was there with Cabin Fever and I wrote the part of Oli for him in Hostel. Quentin was telling me about a QT fest that he does in Austin and how we should do it in Iceland. We should do it for one night, show kung fu flicks and talk about the movies.

Yeah, I love Lustig. We actually did an Italian poster for Hostel that’s an homage to Maniac. But here’s what happened [producer] Chris [Briggs] had done a lot of backpacking and traveling and said that we should set a horror movie in that world. But we didn’t really know what the movie was. I’ve been to Europe and done backpacking and thought “God that is really a great universe.” It’s cheaper to shoot in Europe, to use a European cast but spread a couple of Americans around and make a good scary movie. Though we really had no idea what the movie was at that point. Then about three and a half years ago I was talking with Harry Knowles from Aint it Cool News about really disturbing stuff we had found on the Internet. Harry showed me a site where you could go to Thailand and for $10,000 walk into a room and shoot somebody in the head.

Yeah and what’s really awful is this site claimed that the person you were shooting willingly signed up for this. That they were so poor that part of the money would go to their family. We were thinking it would be a really cool documentary. But if it was real the people running it would kill us. So it laid dormant for a while until a year ago it hit him that that Hostel is about this system in Thailand. I thought, it doesn’t matter if this is real or not, what matters is that somebody built a website for it and somebody was trying to get credit cards and money advertising this. They were so in tune with this notion that out there, there is some businessman that’s so bored that nothing gets them off anymore. Drugs don’t do it, hookers don’t do it, so they want that next level of forbidden stimulation and excitement and this is it.

It’s so funny because I credited Miike as himself. Also Quentin really wanted to play the part that Rick Hoffman did but I thought that it couldn’t be a place where only really violent movie directors go.

Yeah.

I knew he could do it. It was also one of those things where we didn’t have the part cast. Chris Briggs is very close friends with Rick. I knew him from Cellular and I thought, “Jeez he’d be terrific.” Then he showed up and he just nailed it. We didn’t even have to audition him. He’s just such a superb actor. I think he’s just one of those guys that’s getting a cult following. People are like, “Oh I fucking love that guy!” They know him from The Bernie Mac Show and The Street and those kind of TV shows where he always played that fast talking smarmy, slimy Wall Street guy. But he is just a nice, sweet guy that’s really got that kind of role down to science.

I hope so. We wanted an actor that would come in and kind of take you out of the movie but when the movie’s over feel like, “Oh my God that guy almost stole the movie.” Actually a lot of people are saying for all the violence inborn in the film; that moment tends to be the most disturbing for people.

I like the idea of this being this weird dude on the train that seems harmless but creepy. Then later you realize why he’s talking about with his hands. He likes to have a connection to these people he later gets. Whereas most people would want to do it anonymously he wants to experience the whole thing.

Yes, exactly. That’s the whole thing, you’re slowly discovering along with Jay Hernandez what’s happening. You realize that guy’s just one customer and that hundreds of people go to this place.

I realize that anytime you go in with somebody for a single conversation then somebody finds out about it and it’s all over the Internet. It is normal for people to develop multiple projects but on the Internet there’s just infinite information. Some people are good with fact checking, but a lot of times they don’t even fact check with me. They just put it up there. So I thought that I would do this movie differently. I’m just going to go to Prague and quietly do my thing and be like, “here are the photos from my set, we’re cutting it now.” The whole movie was done in a 12 month period. I finished the script and I went right to Prague. Normally it takes three years to get going. Hell Cabin Fever took six years to get done. I realized that the Internet is great but Eli’s just starting to get the reputation of this guy who keeps attaching himself to different projects and not doing anything.

Yeah, I enjoyed Wolf Creek.

Yeah, I’m really excited for him.

The ending was re-shot. We originally had a different ending where Jay Hernandez keeps following this guy and he was going to kill him and the guy is there with his daughter. Jay was going to take his daughter to fuck with the guy. But audiences just couldn’t handle it. So we went back and I just shot a much more straightforward super violent ending and people loved it. I realized that it was the right ending because sometimes you got to make the movie for audiences. I don’t want to be the only one that likes the movie. If you’re in the room with 300 people and 290 of them are completely confused as to why you did a psychological twist, they go, “Huh? Where’s the blood? We want blood.”

We’re not making Schindler’s List. We’re not making a movie that’s bleak and has no fun in it. We’re making a movie for audiences and it’s a horror movie and it’s dark and it’s going to be realistic and violent but it’s not Munich or Syriana. I’ve had numerous experiences when you’re in a small town in Europe and you meet some weird person then you run into them two days later at a totally different place and you’re like, “Oh, my God that’s that fucking guy.”

I was in Prague and they say not to change your money in the street. Derek Richardson goes and changes his money on the street and the guy rips him off for $200. Three weeks later, Derek and Jay Hernandez are walking along and there’s that fucking guy that took Derek’s money. Fucking Jay grabs him and says “Give my friend his fucking money back you motherfucker.” The guy gave him like all his money and more. So Prague is five times the size of this little village in Slovakia so you can say it’s convenient but I’ve had that experience. I remember I was in Iceland I was living on this farm in Reykjavik when I was 19 and some American girl was a total bitch to me. I was just having a conversation saying “oh it’s just cold in Iceland” and she was mad because she thought I was trying to pick her up. Fucking four days later that girl showed up at another place I was at an hour outside of Reykjavik with her fiancé to buy a horse. I was like, “Oh, look who’s here” and we just fucked with her. I’ve had that experience every time I’ve traveled, in every single European country. It seems like crazy coincidences but to me that’s my experience.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck