'Hostel II' director Eli Roth's parents are very proud
Feb 26, 2007, 01:00 PM | by Hannah Tucker
Categories: Film, NY Comic Con 2007
Here’s how I never imagined I’d begin a post about Hostel: Part II (opening June 8): director Eli Roth makes people feel all warm and fuzzy inside. And yet, it’s true. Before I meet Roth (pictured), who was at Comic Con to do a Q&A panel about the sequel to 2005’s torture-and-gore-fest Hostel, I have a lovely talk with his parents. They were on the set of both Hostel films, as well as 2002’s Cabin Fever, and seem not only unscathed but so proud you’d think their son saved kittens for a living. “They’ve been indulging my horror-director dreams since I was eight years old,” says Roth. “They let me get sawed in half with a chainsaw at my bar mitzvah.” Awww. But a supportive family unit hasn’t stopped Roth from making some very screwed-up cinema. EW sat down with Roth and Hostel: Part II stars Heather Matarazzo (The L Word), who is one of the film’s unfortunate American students, and Roger Bart (Desperate Housewives), who plays a sadistic businessman, to talk blood, guts and what Hostel has in common with Borat.
How much of making Hostel: Part II was about making a film more gruesome than the first one? I mean, how much bloodier can things get?
Eli Roth: You definitely want to one-up yourself, but you also don’t want it to become all about that. It’s really easy to make it super bloody and violent and gory. I wanted to build on the strengths of the first [Hostel] and take it to another level. My favorite sequels are Aliens and Road Warrior and The Empire Strikes Back — sequels where you came out and you went, “Oh my God, that was so much better than the first movie.” That was the goal.
Roger and Heather, did you have any... concerns about doing this movie?
Heather Matarazzo: If a horror movie is on [TV], I look at the corner of screen or cover my eyes for half the film. But I was not freaked out at all. I was really excited. It was one of the warmest, safest environments I have ever worked in.
[You see? Warm and fuzzy!]
Roger Bart: It was Eli’s passion that made me to want to take a chance and participate in this. I’ve never really been attracted to gore and blood, but Eli manages to have both elements: the suspense mixed with what is probably an inappropriate amount of blood and guts. I had no idea it was going to be as much fun as it was [making this film]. And, as Heather said, strangely safe, considering we were investigating very dangerous places in our personalities as human beings. But I have had people say to me, “I want to go to Europe, but I have to go before I see the movie.” We ruined tourism.
Roth: I have had people say they’d never go to Europe [after seeing Hostel], but I don’t think they’d go anyway. I think those are people who generally don’t leave their hometowns. And it was banned in the Ukraine because the Hostel Association lobbied the government to not show it. They were worried people wouldn’t go backpacking. But it’s like Borat and Kazakhstan — their tourism increased 30 percent! In Borat, the joke is on the Americans. And that’s what it is in the Hostel movies: the people in Slovakia are just letting it happen. It’s symbolic of what happens in these formerly Communist countries. The dollar is coming in, and the worst parts of humanity come out as a result of it. The Americans are the worst ones of all. The people in Slovakia are just like, “Yeah, you can use that factory. That’s there. Sure.”
Eli, what’s up next for you?
Roth: I went from Hostel: Part I to Part II without a break, so I think I’m going to sleep for about a month or two and then I’ll go right into Cell, the Stephen King adaptation [about a deadly virus transmitted through mobile phones]. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, who wrote The People vs. Larry Flynt and Ed Wood, are writing it now. So as soon as I get the script, I’ll jump in.
And in the meantime, we can watch a your very badass Grindhouse trailer.
Roth: I’m actually in Grindhouse — Quentin [Tarantino] put me in it, and apparently I made a lot of the cut. And I already have offers to make a feature out of the Grindhouse trailer! We shot for two days and just went completely nuts: blood, guts, and no continuity.
Matarazzo: Woo-hoo!
Roth: It was complete silliness and mayhem. It was like film school. We just got a camera and tried to cram in as much blood, gore, and nudity as we could.
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