Mr. September: Eli Roth

Interview by Staci Layne Wilson

Eli Roth is a cutie — he's got those dark-chocolate brown eyes and a sweet smile that could charm even the most hard-hearted Hannah. But Roth is also a complete, total and utter Basterd. He's best-known for making some of the most violent, grisly, and controversial horror movies of the 00's. His feature length horror films Hostel and Hostel II shocked the mainstream, as did his over-the-top fake movie trailer for Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse double-dip (in his slasher-trailer Thanksgiving, Roth gives 'cheerleader splits' and 'stuffing the turkey' whole new meanings). He’s also gearing up make a feature-length version of Thanksgiving and a PG-13 creature-feature called Endangered Species.

So what's a nice boy like Eli doing in Tarantino's latest movie, Iglourious Basterds? Why, killing Nazis, of course! And not just killing them… he's beating, scalping, burning, and basically putting on the hurt in every way imaginable as a psychotic soldier known as "The Bear-Jew". Pretty/Scary caught up with the director-turned-actor, and here is what he had to say...

Eli Roth: Hottest Jew Ever?

Pretty/Scary: How many times did you have to film the scene that introduces your character, the one where you're beating this guy to death with a huge baseball bat?

Eli Roth: We did it a number of times. The whole scene I think we spent five or six days shooting it. It was the first thing we shot. I was back in this cave like working myself up, like ready to kill, and Quentin yells, “And cut! Let’s wrap for the day.” I was like, “Ugh!” And then Brad would go, “Easy, tiger! Easy, tiger!” I asked him to put a pull-up bar and a punching bag so I could stay loose. I didn’t want to be like, “Oh, I pulled a muscle.” I didn’t want to be that guy. For days I was like [insert punching noises here] just working myself up, and Quentin would be like, “And that’s a wrap,” so we would never get to it. I worked myself up to tears and then never get to shoot it. So I was like, “Quentin, you’re blue-balling me every day,” but he was doing it on purpose.

Eli and Brad Pitt in the same screenshot - that's awesome.

Finally, we got to the scene, and I was just ready. I was just ready to explode. I just unloaded on the guy. It was great when I finally beat him just to get that out and just do it over and over and over and over, and I just completely blew out my voice. Then we had to film the reactions of the guys cheering me on. We already got shots of me doing this today, so by the time it came to me beating him again, they were like excited, but Quentin’s like, “No, you guys have to be loving this, and you have to be laughing.” So, I just started fucking the dummy in a sexy way like skull fucking it. Like really skull fucking it, and the guys were like, “YEAH!” You see Til Schweiger with the biggest smile on his face and that was like me skull-fucking the dummy. That’s what I was willing to do for my fellow basterds.

It’s this crazy thing where you’re back there, and I didn’t want to be like too “actor-y” and try and get all emotional, but I was listening to heavy metal and listening to all this music to just psych myself up to kill like Iron Maiden and Misfits and Guns n’ Roses and Dead Kennedys like punk-rock. Then my girlfriend at the time put Hannah Montana as a joke on my [iPod] and it was like, “Everybody makes mistakes.” I was like, “What the fuck is this?” “Everybody knows what I’m talking ‘bout. Sometimes I’m in a jam. I gotta make a plan.” I was like fucking singing Hannah Montana, and then I was like what if Brad Pitt came back and was like, “What the fuck are you listening to?” And what if Quentin was like, “What are you doing? Are you like listening to Hannah Montana? You’re supposed to be beating this guy. What the hell’s wrong with you?” and I just thought like, “Oh, God, what if I get caught listening to Hannah Montana?” I had total Hannah Montana shame. Then I was like she put this on as a joke, but now I’m kind of enjoying it and now I’m secretly embarrassed about that, and that just made me go crazy. So if I wanted to instantly go to my psycho place, I would just put on Hannah Montana and think [to myself], “God, what if I was at a concert and I had a bat? Would I just go nuts and start wiping the place out? And then what if I was Hannah Montana? How would I pull that off? I don’t even look like I’m in college let alone high school. Would I be a teacher who’s also a pop star? Oh yeah, we’ve got to film the scene.” Literally, Quentin’s like, “Man, you’re so intense. You’re so in the zone,” and I’m thinking, “What if I was Hannah Montana?” You never know what takes you to a place of insanity.

Portrait of Eli (photo by Denise Truscello)

PS: Did the bloody baseball bat, as opposed to a knife or a gun, help you get into this guy’s mind set?

Roth: Oh, well, I grew up in Boston, and let me tell you, you use your baseball bat off the field more than you use it on the field in Boston. I mean, everybody had baseball bats in their cars in Boston. That was just like a big thing. I remember in high school we were getting drunk on a Wednesday and this kid this kid Matt Casey comes down with his nose broken. We were seniors and they were juniors and they were like, “The juniors fucked up Casey!” and we were like, “Kill the juniors!” and everybody had bats within seconds and the juniors showed up to finish the fight and we were just smashing these kids and crushing their cars with bats.

I remember I was staying back watching these animals and this kid jumped into the car next to me and I was like, “Dude, I can’t believe you did that for Matt Casey,” and he was like, “Who’s Matt Casey?” [Laughter] That exemplified Boston. Everybody just wanted to use it to smash something.

So when I had that bat, I thought of that, and I thought of those guys. “Who’s Matt Casey? I don’t give a fuck. I just want to smash some shit.” So when I had that bat in my hand I thought of Boston where I grew up. That’s what I thought of. Plus, being in wool underwear will make you want to kill anything. We were fully period. Everything. Even if it wasn’t seen like the socks, the underwear, wool wife-beaters. My God. You can imagine what I smelled like. I smelled like a bear. It was disgusting. Quentin’s like, “You’re gonna get a cool leather jacket and you’re gonna get a sawed off shot gun.” I was like, “Mad Max? Yeah! That’s be cool!” Because I got there first, I got to kind of poach all the cool costumes. I was like, “I want that jacket. I want that gun. I want that.” Quentin’s like, “Yeah, that’s cool! You got here first. You get all the cool stuff. We’ll put Samm Levine in this sweater.”

All he thinks about is beating Nazis to death.

PS: How do you think your experience in working on this film will change your future attitude toward acting and directing?

Roth: It’s certainly going to change the way I write scenes. Always in Hostel after I did an intense torture scene gave the actors a few days off to recover and rest. I’m glad I did that. I can see why you need that.

One thing that’s going to change is how I run my sets. Quentin had a big rule about no cell phones, no computers, no BlackBerries, nothing on set. We had a guy we called “Check point Charlie,” this German guy. You had to give him your phone. If your phone went off, you were fucked. Quentin was firing people. You’d get caught and then suddenly someone else had your part. It was no bullshit. You were there for the movie. If you’re doing anything else on set, you’re out. So, nobody brought their phones. You’d keep it in you trailer. Talk during lunch or whatever. It gave everyone a certain focus, and Quentin did not have video play backs. He’d go, “I hate this fucking video village bull shit. I don’t want everyone at the monitor watching this and watching that. No. You fucking do your job, and I’ll watch it from the camera, and if the DP says it’s fine, it’s fine. I trust him, and we’re moving on.” As a result, everyone’s focused. You’re not just sitting around. He would break up the chairs. It was like, “Where’s video village?” He’s like, “The mayor came in and shut it down.” We’re like, “What happened to chair town?” He’s like, “There’s no more fucking chair town, alright. Chair town is becoming too much of a fucking social thing, and I’m here making a movie and you’re all fucking going to chair town everyday. That’s not what we’re fucking here for.”

On a balcony in Cannes, after he dropped the baby he was holding over the railing.

Certain things like that kept the focus. Quentin did not have a trailer. He’s like, “What am I fucking hanging out at my trailer for? My job is to be on-set. I’m making this movie.” I was really impressed. It just changed. Everyone was kind of like, “What? How can you make a movie without video village? We need our cell phones. What? What?” You realized, you don’t need any of it.

I was thinking, of course, in Cabin Fever we never had any of that stuff. We just moved fast. There were certain things like that. Also, when Quentin’s directing you, you give your performance, and then he turns the camera around and then you’re off camera acting for the actor. Well, I was like, “Man, that was where I came up with all my good stuff.” He was like, “Dude, it doesn’t matter if you’re Robert De Niro or Sam Jackson. Everybody is more relaxed off camera.” You’re just better. That’s just how it is. You’re not self-conscious. Stuff just comes out of you that you might just second guess yourself. You don’t second guess yourself when you’re off camera.

What he does, if there’s something he sees that’s off camera that he likes, he’ll stop. He’ll finish with this actor, and he’ll re-light, and he’ll re-shoot you. That’s what makes Quentin such a great director. Everybody’s now on it, full-time, a hundred percent. Even though they were before, now he gives you the hope that if you come up with something genius, it’s gonna still make it into the movie cause Quentin’s watching you and watching how the other person responds. As a result, everyone’s performance is better. Like Brad is great off camera. Everyone is great off camera. If you don’t get it, and there’s time, and he likes it, Quentin will turn the camera around.

'Hostel II' Eli comes with removable apron and interchangeable weaponry. For little girls who love torturing their Barbies!

The best example is when we were doing the introductions when we were trying to be Italian, and he’s like “Bon jour-no” and he’s like “Antonio Margo-naise” like that. And then he’s like, “Doney De-coco,” and we’re not. We filmed a whole day of that. Then the next day we were shooting Christoph so we’re all like doing [hand gestures] and I’m like really trying out all this, and then Quentin goes, “What if Omar just copies Donny and does that too?” So he goes, “Eli, this joke is better not as a pundit, but as a set-up for Omar cause now you just realized the whole mission’s fucked and these guys have no idea what he’s doing. If this guys copying Donny, then they’re really screwed.” And then he just did that and then Omar did exactly like that and that just set up everything about the finale of how fucked these guys were. That’s Quentin.

Quentin stopped and he’s like, “Guys, re-light. Turn it around. Bring in all the background. Re-dress everything behind them. We’re re-shooting that” because that little hand gesture was so fucking funny and set up the entire last act. So little things like that I never thought. I figured once you get it, you move on, but knowing that if someone did something great like turn the camera around and get it.

On the set of 'Hostel II' in the famous 'bloodbath' set.

PS: Both you guys are cinephiles, obviously. The character Aldo Raine is a reference to Aldo Rane...

Roth: Yes, and Lieutenant Raine is the character named in Rolling Thunder,.

PS: ... So, did you try and channel any iconic World War II characters or actors from the period?

Roth: No. I was channeling people I knew and myself. It’s interesting how there’re certain things that you don’t realize that you’re channeling, you know, the influences that get in there. I didn’t want to consciously take from anyone. I wanted to be my own, sometimes close to my personality, but really the guys I grew up with; the guys who used to beat the shit out of me. I remember over Christmas Quentin and I went to see this Stanley Kubrick film, The Killing, and we were talking about how much we loved Timothy Carey in that film. It was in the parking lot and this guy shoots the horse, and it’s this really, really creepy, weird scene. Quentin showed the movie to Joe Dante, and he said, “Eli, you’re like Tony Curtis, but with a touch of Timothy Carey,” and I said, “Quentin, oh my God, you realize especially in that theater scene at the end,” which is the stuff we shot after I had seen that film. So without even realizing it... it’s like Joe Dante is like a great chef. He knows exactly what ingredients went in there. He’s like, “OK, Eli...” but I wasn’t consciously trying to do any of that.

What was really great was to sort of bring Brad Pitt down to our level of grind house cinema. The first day we were talking about how much we loved Floyd and how cool it was that Pineapple Express was a whole movie made out of Floyd which Quentin wrote and Brad created. We were talking about how that’s become the new Spicoli. My generation grew up on Spicoli as the stoner, but now everybody knows Floyd. He’s like, “Well, I like Sean Penn. He’s the greatest. I have the utmost respect for Spicoli,” but we’re like, “Floyd is brilliant.” He’s like, “Yeah, do you guys watch Wonder Pets?” We’re like, “Wonder Pets?” and he’s like [singing], “Wonder Pets! Wonder Pets! We’re not too big. We’re not too tall, but when we’re together, we’ve got the right stuff. What’s going to work? Team work!” He’s like, “I’ve got kids. That’s what we watch.” He watches Wonder Pets.

So Quentin and I got into a discussion the first day about zombie versus shark. We’re like, when a zombie fights a shark, and Brad’s like, “What are you talking about? What’s that? Zombie versus a shark?” We’re like, “Yeah, zombie versus shark. The zombie falls off the boat and is walking under water. Then this shark bites him and the zombie bites the shark. It’s a real shark.” Brad’s just looking at us and Diane Kruger and everyone’s like, “What are you talking about?” and Quentin and I are like, “Dude, it’s the greatest scene ever! It’s low budget so you know it’s really a real shark.” Like how would you put a guy with a real shark? We’re like, “He did it! It was Italy. It was 1979. What do you want? So there were no rules. They shot it. A zombie fights a shark.” They’re like, “No, no!” and then Jake and all these guys are like, “Oh yes. Zombie versus shark.” So Brad the next day was like, “What’s the zombie versus shark? Then the next day Quentin got his print (he has a 35 mm print) and he showed him the reel of zombie versus shark and Brad’s like, “This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen!”

We were in this bar called Tarentino’s and they had video projection and they were showing Hostel and he’s like, “Oh man! Nice casting, Eli! This is great. I gotta see this.” He came in the next day and he’s like, “Man! Donald, you bastard, I was lord of my house last night and I watched that thing. It freaked the shit out of me! That was disgusting! It was awesome!” It was great to take our love of cinema and infect Brad Pitt with it.

Eli getting beaten into submission by two weird chicks with leather whips.

PS: Were there any other roles in this film that you were interested in that you would have like to have given a shot at?

Roth: No. The only role for me was the Bear Jew. I was like, “This is it.” To be a Jewish guy from Boston that just beats Nazis to death with a baseball bat. I’ve been training my whole life for that part. There’s no other role. That’s what I said to him. I was like, this is it. I think there’s some actors that feel, no actors in this cast, but actors he’d worked with that felt that they were... ok, now that I’ve been in a Tarantino movie I can do anything, but for us, this was end game. This was it, like the ultimate dream for all of us was to be in a Tarantino movie.

We know there’s no such thing as a small part in a Tarantino film. You can be Floyd in True Romance. You can be Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction. Every part is a chance to create a classic cinema moment, and everybody’s going for it. I felt so lucky. At the first table read, you looked around the room and it’s Christoph Waltz and August Diehl who plays Major Hellstrom and all these incredible European actors, Melanie Laurent. You felt, "God this movie’s going to be amazing. It’s going to be something so special and so different.” It was just a thrill to be a part of it.

Eli defending his horror movie to lame American audiences who think it had some kind of 'message', when it is obvious there is zero meaning behind the film except 'look at chicks! watch them die!' (wait - is that a message?)

PS: And you were the only one to get an entrance. The first one, anyway.

Roth: Yeah, well, Hugo Stiglitz got his entrance. He got the title “freeze-framer.” He got a pretty cool entrance, Til Schweiger who’s also a great director. Quentin showed his film Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door. Til’s very interesting because he made this movie Keinohrhasen which is a “Rabbit without ears.” It’s the most successful movie in Germany. It was bigger than Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean. Hugo Stiglitz, he wrote it, directed it, and stared in it. He made it for very low budget. It was a huge phenomenon. He’s making a sequel. It’s made for six year olds and has two extended sequences of pussy in it. I watched it, and it was like a long scene of a tale going down on a girl, and she falls, and I was like this was a rated X. I was like, “Til, this is a movie for six year olds.” He goes, “It’s Germany. It’s different. It’s not like America.” I’m like, “That’s it! I’m moving to Germany!”

PS: How honored were you when you read in the script that you were going to be the man who might blow away Hitler?

Eli Roth: It was an incredible honor and certainly an honor that I took very seriously. That was actually not originally in the script. That was something that came about as we were shooting. So it was even more of an honor in fact because as we were shooting Quentin adapts to what he likes as things are going on. He was so happy with what I was doing as the Bear Jew in the scene where we were beating Rachtman. He just loved the scene where I was kicking ass.

Then I shot Nation’s Pride, the film within the film, and Quentin, I think he realized, he’s like, “Wait a minute, he likes shooting all the action stuff in the film.” We fired so many thousands of bullets in two days making Nation’s Pride I was like, “Dude! We have machines guns and thirty guys firing,” and he’s like, “Wait a minute. We gotta a machine gun,” and over Christmas, he re-wrote it. He’s like, “We’re making a little change,” and I read it and it was like Donny kicks open the door and shoots Hitler in the face. I was like “Woo-hoo!” I was so happy. It was amazing. It was like I’m going to be the new Moses. I have to say, as much of a thrill as it is to watch, it was really far more difficult than I ever anticipated shooting those scenes. Shooting the comedy was fun. We had a blast doing that. It just turned into a Marx Brothers movie by the end. We shot so much ridiculous silly stuff [with the] bad Italian.

I know when I’m filming a scene like in Hostel, and I’m chopping up body parts and cutting out eyes, as the scene progresses, I’m getting happier and happier because I have this jigsaw puzzle that’s kind of empty in my head, and I know that the eye goo ran perfectly. [I’m thinking] “Alright, ok, it’s gonna work! It’s gonna work!” I’m just picturing the audience screaming, but when I have to do that scene where I beat the guy’s head in [in this movie]... I lifted weights. I put on almost 40 pounds of muscle. The guy’s gotta look physically imposing when he comes out of that cave. That’s one thing. What’s gonna make it work is the look in his face and the look in his eyes. This guy has to look possessed. He has to look tortured and tarnished like this is all he thinks about is beating Nazis to death.

To do that, you really have to dredge up the most painful…like think of your worst break up, your worst fight, the most horrible death and make it feel like it happened fifteen minutes ago. I was working myself up into this state. After you film a scene like that, even though the scene is fake, when everyone’s like, “Great! That’s a wrap. Let’s go out for drinks,” like you just want to crawl into a hole and die. You’re like, “Ugh!” It was exhausting and draining in a way I could have never anticipated. Even the scene where we were shooting Hitler, it’s weird because I’m friends with all the people on the crew. I’ve been on a crew because I’ve been shooting Nation’s Pride stuff, so I remember the day I was going to do the scene where we’re wiping out the high command. Everyone’s like, “God, what’s with Eli? Are you alright?” I’m like, “I’m gonna kill Hitler! Do you mind? Like, leave me alone!” I’m trying to work myself up and people would stop and they’d be like, “Wait, wait. Eli’s really upset. He’s really in a bad mood.” I’m like, “It’s acting, you guys! I’m allowed to act also,” so it was hard, but that scene: We almost got killed.

Quentin does not like to use CGI. He wants everything to be authentic. So he had this fire, and they had done numerous tests with a fire. There was a special set where they rebuilt the theater with this controlled fire. The fire they estimated it was going to burn (they had done temperature readings) up to 400 degrees centigrade, and the flags caught fire. They’d never burned; they’d never tested it with all the stuff in, all the props. All the flags caught fire. They’re like, “It will never get closer than this,” and the fire was like “Whoosh!” It got up to 1200 degrees centigrade which is 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and you see me on camera go “Ah!” I got singed. We had flame retardant clothing under our costumes and covered in fire gel, and there were two people in fire suits with extinguishers blow us, and then Quentin on a crane in a fire suit. There’s me and Omar firing these machine guns. Our hands just start burning. I mean, it was 2000 degrees. It was horrible. I’d never experienced pain like that. I’d never been in a fire. I had no frame of reference for what that was like.

Eli making sure the corpse bleeds 'just so'. Perfectionist!

I had done so many thousands of clip reloads and weapons changing that this adrenaline kicked in, and I was like on auto pilot just shooting going “We’ve got to do this!” It’s like, if we die doing this shot, we have to do this. Finally, they yelled, “Cut!” and I remember we went down and there was a play back in a tent which is rare. We almost never have play back, and I watched the shot, and I passed out. When I woke up, I had ice all over me and aloe. It was like zero degrees out. We’re in this tent with our arms in these buckets of ice and rags, and Quentin said, he looked over and said that was about as bad as he’s ever felt about making actors do something. I was happy because now if any actor complains on any of my sets, I can be like, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you because I was in a 2000 degree fire,” but you know what? The shot went great, and that’s all that matters.