Eli Roth Q&A

Chris Tilly catches up with writer-director Eli Roth on the set of his bloody horror sequel 'Hostel: Part II'

What made you decide to return to the ‘Hostel’ story?

Truthfully the big inspiration was ‘The Devil’s Rejects’. It’s just assumed that a horror sequel is going to be bad. It’s never going to be as good as the first one. Then you see a film like ‘The Devil’s Rejects’ and you think… wait a minute, Rob Zombie learned a lot, grew as a filmmaker and got the most amazing performances from Bill Moseley, Sid Haig, Priscilla Barnes and Sheri Moon, and I thought god, he really stepped it up a notch. He kind of re-defined the horror sequel. With ‘Cabin Fever’ I had a very clear idea of the sequel, and people didn’t want to do it, they were afraid of it, and I said fine, I’m moving on. And now they regret not having done it. With ‘Hostel’, I didn’t want to let it go into anyone else’s hands, so I thought if you’re going to do a sequel, why not try and make ‘Empire Strikes Back’ or ‘Road Warrior’ or ‘Godfather 2’. Why just assume it’s going to be a repeat or not as good as the original. Why not make it better than the original – let’s blow it away – make it ‘Aliens’. Let’s make something that’s so unbelievable you forget about the first one.

 

So where do you go from there?

Well it had to be a better script. Bigger, but not so much bigger it feels like a different movie. But how are you going to be scary now that everyone knows what’s going on? Now that you know what the hook is, where does the suspense and the horror come from? So I just started looking at people like the BTK killer [a Kansas serial killer who was caught in 2005]. ‘Hostel’ was very much a reaction to imagery from Iraq and people’s fear of torture. But now I think the fear is your neighbour. And what people saw with Hurricane Katrina was that in America, under the right circumstances, when there’s no law and no rules and total anarchy, people start killing and raping. They go back to this kind of primal, feral state. I remember when I was in Prague and we were doing ‘Hostel’ re-shoots for the ending, when Katrina happened we were sitting there going ‘this is America 2005 – where are the cops, where’s the army’? There was nobody, and people in America feel like there’s no protection. I think it’s no accident that horror movies are doing well. I think a few years ago people felt like they were protected by the army, which can’t protect us now because we’re trying to take over countries we have no business taking over. The police aren’t going to save you – when things get really bad they quit. Money doesn’t matter to these people – terrorists don’t give a shit about money. People really don’t feel safe. Add on top of it the BTK killer was caught in Kansas after 30 years of terrorising people, and he’s a guy who went to church, who everybody knew. So many killers are being caught who’ve never hurt anyone or done anything – there’s just something dark that festered in them and they snapped, like the guy who killed those girls in the Amish school, so now, not only do Americans not feel protected, but they’re fucking terrified of the people next door.

Did it take long to write?

I started writing ideas for it while I was doing international press. So I took notes and watched the movie with audiences all over the world and saw what people responded to. Everybody loves that scene with the American businessman – Rick Hoffman – people love the girl getting run over, they love the kids, they love the desk clerk, so there are certain strengths the film had that I could build on. With the first one, the whole point is that the trip takes such a horrible unexpected turn. The first 30 minutes it’s all fun, sort of like a sex comedy, and then after 30 minutes the rug is sort of pulled out from under you. With this one I didn’t want to do that again. So this one will start off scary and creepy and stay like that all the way through. Even while these girls are having fun, because we know what’s going on, we’re not having fun with them. We’re going to feel scared for them. So I really just wanted to make a film that was tonally consistent in way that my first two films maybe weren’t.

So what was it like writing the film from a woman’s perspective this time around?

I’m not exactly known for strong female characters, although people loved Natalya and Barbara in ‘Hostel’. I didn’t want to just write girls that are evil though. I wanted to show that I could write girls the same way I write guys. And I wanted these girls to be the best characters I’ve ever written. I wanted them to be real and three dimensional and talk like real girls talk. In the first draft everything sounded like a guy but with a girl’s name. It was all like ‘Dude, what the fuck’s that? Come on!’ It was basically the ‘Hostel’ guys all over again, so I had to scrap all the dialogue. I talked to Quentin [Tarantino] about it, as he’s the master of female dialogue. He writes girl dialogue kind of based on friends of his, and he’s so tuned into their psychology, I just started trying to listen and think and approach things differently, from a female perspective. Once I got over the fear of writing female characters it actually came quite easily and I was really happy with it. I just thought about girls I knew really, really well and I’d just have conversations with them and tried to relay how they talk about certain things. It was fun. So this is definitely a girl’s movie.

Eli Roth making a girlie movie?

Guys are going love it too because there’s gore and sex. It’s not girly by any stretch – gore-wise we’re aiming to push it and have as much violence as ‘Hostel’, if not more. But it’s definitely from a female’s experience.

Was it important to come back to Prague and get this team together again?

It was huge. ‘Hostel’ was the most fun of my life and the whole crew was like a family. Everyone worked well together and we all liked hanging round with each other, on set and off. I love living in Prague, and thought there’s no way I’m not doing it in Prague. And I wanted it to look and feel like ‘Hostel’. I wanted similar locations – I wanted to go back to the town and back to the factory. It was very important that it feels like the same world. When you watch ‘Saw 2’ and they go back to that original bathtub, everyone cheers. It’s such a great reveal. I knew we couldn’t do that particular twist, but it’s a great feeling when you go back to a place you really liked in a movie and get to see more of it. It’s like bonus stuff. I think if people want to see ‘Hostel 2’, they want to check into the hostel that the guys checked into. So now the fun is to play on who’s in on it and who isn’t. Toying with the audience. Everyone’s going to assume that everyone they meet is a bad guy, so it’s fun to play with that.

Do you think you’ve matured as a filmmaker since the first one?

I don’t think matured, but I get less worked up over stuff I used to get freaked out about. I’m much more confident, but I also think I have a much better sense of when to listen. Like when I deal with the studios. I deal with two studios – Screen Gems and Lionsgate – and I feel like I’ve become much more of a politician. And now I know the differences in the lenses rather than saying I want it closer. I can really articulate what I want by describing it with a specific lens, which is something I couldn’t do before. I also feel like, having shot two movies, I know how much to shoot, how to cover a scene, and what stuff winds up being fat and filler. How to really tighten a scene, so you’re only shooting the essential parts that you’re going to use. Knowing when to be hand-held, knowing when to use a tripod, knowing when to steadi-cam. That stuff I feel certain about now.

Is it tougher having the studio, and to some extent, the world watching you because of the success of the first one?

It’s weird. There has to be a part of my personality that loves to be under the microscope – otherwise I wouldn’t put myself out there the way I do. I’ve gone out of my way to make myself a name brand associated with a certain kind of film. I want people to see my name on a movie, pay money and know they’re going to be entertained for 90 minutes. They’re going to see blood, it’s R-rated, there’s going to be guts, there’s going to be nudity. I want people to know who I am, what I’m about and what they’re in it for.

They’re going to get balls to the wall horror.

Yeah, balls to the wall. I’m always going to push the envelope and do things that are borderline offensive and piss people off. That’s the fun and I guess that’s my personality. But being under the microscope is extremely difficult – now it’s like I can’t just change shit – although I am – but people just freak out because they fall in love with certain things. But I like to change stuff on the fly, change things around as I’m shooting and come up with new lines. Nobody ever noticed before, and now it’s like I have to explain the changes because they freak out. But the truth of the matter is I put more pressure on myself and have higher expectations than anybody, so if I can meet those expectations, and not let myself down, then I won’t let the fans down. I don’t make movies thinking ‘God I hope the fans are going to like this’, I’m making this movie thinking ‘if I just paid $10 and given up my Friday night, what would I really want to see in ‘Hostel II’’, and if I don’t get those things I’m going to be pissed off and feel like I’ve been ripped off and go on the internet to say how much it sucks. That’s how I approach it. Who knows what people are going to like? I like to take risks and do weird things and stuff that’s not normal compared to other Hollywood movies. Not stuff that’s totally avant garde and daring, but doing stuff that’s in other languages and not using stars and using real people – things that they generally don’t do in mainstream films. Hopefully people will like it, but my main priority is that it’s scary. It’s not about doing more blood and guts and gore, it’s is it scary and do I care about these people and what happens to them next? And that’s been the focus the entire time.

With the cast you yet again seem to have gone for actors rather than stars.

Last time Jay Hernandez was really the sort of star, and this time someone like Roger Bart and Richard Bergi are recognisable from ‘Desperate Housewives’ or Heather Materrazo from ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’, but they aren’t big box office names, though there’s no reason why they couldn’t be. But I always want to cast who's best for the role. There are plenty of ‘name’ people who wanted a part and we auditioned them but if they weren’t good I just didn’t cast them.

After all the flack you took for your presentation of Slovakia in the first film, how did the country’s former Minister for Culture end up in the sequel?

Milan Karashko was the most famous actor in Slovakia and then retired and went into politics. He was in politics for 13 years, and I think while we were shooting ‘Hostel’, he actually was the Minister of Culture. So he came in to audition and I was wondering if he knew what kind of movie he was auditioning for. He said ‘You know – it’s just a movie, it’s just a story – these films are like fairytales for adults,’ which is what I always say. I asked him about what the people in Slovakia thought, and he just laughed. He said ‘If people in Slovakia take this seriously, that’s their problem, not mine – it’s a movie, not a documentary’. And I agree – how many people still go to Texas after all those Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies? It’s not real.

Is this a franchise we’ve got gearing up for then?

I’m not thinking beyond ‘Hostel: Part II’. I feel like next I’ll do [Stephen King adaptation] ‘Cell’, but the truth is I’ve been going since October 2004 when I started writing ‘Hostel’ and I haven’t stopped in exactly two years. I haven’t taken a day off – I went right from doing the international press to doing the DVD release to writing the sequel to prepping the sequel, so I think after this I need to take a break, slow down, find a place to live, find a girlfriend.

‘Hostel: Part II’ is in cinemas now.

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