ScreenAnarchy Interviews Hostel's Eli Roth.

Insert tongues in cheeks in five, four, three, two ....

We’d like to publicly apologize to Eli Roth and Barbara Nedeljakova. This interview was assigned in all good faith but involved a correspondent that- needless to say- we won’t be working with again. Dave means well but he’s not to be trusted after a night (or in this case what sounds more like week) on the town. He was so excited about interviewing Eli and Barbara about their new film HOSTEL that he somehow managed to track them down in their hotel room. We can only gather it was the middle of the night and that Dave was basically a little under the weather. The tape we were sent ends exactly like what you’re going to read and frankly we can’t blame Eli or Barbara one bit.

[Sound of Knocking]

DAVE: Hello….HELLOOOOOOOOO.

ELI & BARB: [faintly a pair of voices] Yes.

D: I’m looking for Eli Roth’s room?

ELI: (Sounds like someone waking up) I’m Eli Roth.

D: Oh… great. Look I wanted to ask you a couple a questions about yer new flick Hostel the one about the backpackers who wind up going through all that %&*@# after they hook up with these two like totally righteous local babe-aritas.

[Door Opens though we think we hear the sound of chain preventing from opening more than a couple of inches.]

ELI: Huh…what? Do I know you?

D: Oh sorry dude Dave- from ScreenAnarchy Online just wanted to ask some questions about the new flick Hostel.

ELI: Yeah… uh…okay. It’s kind of late…

D: Alright hey, no biggie. So the flick seems about half boobs and half blood?

ELI: It’s actually a third boobs, and a third blood and then a third really creepy disturbing mystery.

D: Yeah…. wow. That’s like cool that you can get it down that exact and all. Do the actresses like vying for the boob time?

ELI: Uh, well we talk to all the actresses ahead of time so everybody knows exactly…

D: Like do they catfight for ya?! Dude you are so lucky. I remember one time in the seventh grade…

ELI: No, no. We work out all the sex scenes and nudity with everyone so they’ll feel comfortable. Do you do this much? I mean usually I don’t do interviews without…

D: Oh it’s cool dude. I’m cool.

ELI: Well… anyway. Barbara and I talked extensively about all that stuff…

D: Hehehehe cool.

ELI: AND we discussed how important it was for the audience to be seduced along with the two male characters. All the sensual content was there to reinforce the theme.

D: I wrote a theme once… actually my friend Doogie wrote it for me. [Calling over Eli’s shoulder] Hey Barb does yer mom know you hang out with this dude? I mean she’s cool with it yeah?

B: Yes (laughing). She saw the movie and said she thought it would be worse than it was.

D: Like it sucked?! That @#$%..

B: NO! [Barbara has now come to the door] Like the content would be more extreme.

D: .Wow. Yer even more babe-uler in person. So do you have guys like hit on you all time or do they just check out the flicks?

[Eli interrupts to tell Barbara she doesn’t have to do the interview if she doesn’t want to. Barbara says she thinks Dave is basically harmless and that if they keep going maybe he’ll get tired and go away.]

B: I’ve met a lot of guys in my life that all they want to think about is how to get me into bed. It’s sad. It’s basically about avoiding any obligations or real human contact.

D: A friend of mine had contacts but she swallowed them by accident. So basically yer saying, that… you and Eli are a couple right?

ELI: Yes.

D: Oh… well. So I mean. Eli, yer makin all these movies where people get it on and then get killed but it doesn’t sound like yer living it? You know what I mean?

ELI: You mean like killing people….

D: No man, the babe-aritas. I mean what’s the point of making everybody get naked if all yer gonna do is take pictures.

ELI: Look I’ve only made one other movie before this. If people are gonna assume all this stuff, that speaks more about them than it does about me. You can’t be a drunken, woman chasing idiot and pull off two low budget horror films in wide theatrical release. If you’re some drunken frat idiot the last thing you would want is a job that requires so much work, responsibility and discpline. I’m running a business. I write the movie, raised the money, hired the crew and put the entire thing together. I’m the architect of a huge project from start to finish and then I’m the personality that goes out and sells it.

D: Dude….

ELI: I write about the society I live in, things I’ve seen and people I know. That’s what Cabin Fever was. There’s really only one or two nude scenes in Cabin Fever. It’s got that sort of attitude or energy but it’s not a sex romp. Hostel starts out with the same sort of energy but very, very quickly becomes something else. In Hostel the attitude of these two guys are really punished. In Cabin Fever people die because they’re in a horror film.

In Hostel people die… I know so many guys who think it would be fun to go to Vegas and find hookers. That’s something I could never do but a lot of so called normal guys get into things like that. A lot of young guys go off to Eastern Europe because they want to go into a room have sex with someone and have a story to tell for later. But they don’t realize the effect or damage done to that “someone” in that room. That’s why I have the characters go to Amsterdam in Hostel because it’s easy to portray as sort of an R Rated Disneyland- the girls are just a ride to them.

D: UH dude…

ELI: And that’s a growing attitude I think among young American men. Whether they draw it from pornographic websites or their own fantasies the impression is that you can cruise Europe looking for girls to pick up and this is coming from a culture/country where only ten percent of the population has a passport.

And the reality is in articles like the one I read in the New York Times. These poor girls from Eastern Europe and Odessa that would answer adds to be cocktail waitresses in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv and be trafficked through Slovakia by the Russian Mafia and have their passports taken away and be put to work in brothels. These are eighteen or nineteen year old girls! If the girls report it to the police the police turn them back over to the mob. If the girls get deported the mob publicly kills them. A lot of the girls wind up killing themselves.

Meanwhile businessmen from America, Italy, walk into rooms for a half hour bit of fun. People’s lives are getting destroyed. No one thinks about that.

D: DUDE!

ELI: What!!

D: So why does the nice guy get punished first in the movie?

ELI: So that everybody winds up stuck with the guy who’s the dick. I want the audience to feel unsafe. Maybe they thought they knew what the movie is but then you make them realize that while they were cheering these guys on they were being the same kind of sexist asshole. These guys have every opportunity to make other choices, to leave, to not take advantage of the situation they are in. But they choose to only think about the moment, about getting laid. They think later they’ll be in law school or working at some firm and be able to look back on some wild memory.

There’s a key moment in the movie where you realize that it’s all about exploitation and that all those roles of pimp, and hooker and john get reversed so easily when we stop looking at each other like we’re human beings and not just pieces of meat. But then these guys wind up in a room where people have paid for the right to torture them anyway that they want.

D: Whoa!

ELI: And the violence in the film is all about what it takes for each one of us to realize the capacity for violence within ourselves. I mean…

D: WHOAH-WHOAH!! Dude hold on a minute!! My head…. IT’S JUST A MOVIE DUDE!!

ELI: Wait a minute. I don’t want to alienate anybody but I’m not going to water myself down for anybody either. These are my ideas, this is my chance to comment on society, this is where I feel people are heading. And I also think these are ideas that concern everybody, and that audiences are smarter than people give them credit for. Unfortunately, a lot of the people that want to see Hostel as just another stupid horror movie wouldn’t be reading ScreenAnarchy to read the analysis of it anyway. I hope people have fun at Hostel, I hope they get scared and jump but I also hope that thirty years from now Hostel is a movie that people can rent and discuss and feel enlightened by.

D: I think I’m gonna hurl dude…it’s too early for this… oh my HEAAAAAAAAD!!

ELI: BARBARA LOOK OUT!!

[At this point horrible sounds can be heard as well as the sound of someone shouting in Russian, a mumbled retching sorry and Eli says something about dry cleaning and asks if Dave is okay.]

D: Aw man I puked all over my copy of Cabin Fever I was going to ask you to autograph. Now the hologram cover doesn’t work anymore. Here let me wipe it off.

ELI: NO, NO THAT’S OKAY…Can we maybe…it’s really late.

D: I screwed this up didn’t I?

ELI: No in fact let’s continue this later. Can you meet Barbara and I at this location for a little get together?

D: Like…aw man, no kidding!! I knew you were a party dude!!

ELI: Oh we’ll party alright. We’ll send a car. This place is out in the middle of nowhere and we wouldn’t want you to get lost. It’s kind of exclusive so don’t tell anybody okay.

D: See you then man.

When we got the tape we were afraid it wouldn’t run. What with all the blood and vomit and hair stuck to it. But our technicians managed to catch all this on side A. You don’t want to know what we found on side B.

[thanks to Eli for being a good sport with this.]