Moviepulse: How much gore is too much?

Eli Roth: Honestly, it’s in the editing where I decide how much gore is too much. You can feel it. When you’re watching a film, when it’s too much gore, it’s boring. It’s like cooking. Gore is just one ingredient. If you’re making your favorite dish, and you add too much of one ingredient, it messes up everything.

MP: What can we expect on the DVD of Hostel 2?

Gabe Roth: There are loads of features. On the Blu-Ray DVD, we have security monitors that show the full tortures in the factory as a feature. It’s pretty damn cool.

MP: What are your thoughts on piracy and illegal downloading?

Eli Roth: Hostel is aimed at teenagers and college kids. They are the people that are pirating the most. There was a rough work print that leaked out and there were millions of downloads and of course when the film hit theaters it was on the internet. Piracy is a terrible problem in the US. However, in Sweden, for example they contract millions of people downloading movies. There was an estimate that the downloads hurt the box office take by 25 percent. That’s real money. There are a lot of people at these (film) companies, whose job depends on these movies doing well. When you are aiming a movie at the teenagers who are the ones pirating the film, it definitely hurts. I feel with DVD, I don’t think piracy affects it as much. It seems to be so much work to rip it, why not just buy it. What’s amazing is how we have these critics that openly talk about how they have a pirated DVD. I was shocked when a critic spoke publicly about buying a pirated DVD of Hostel and skipping past the gore. This is illegal! This is a federal crime! How is this person allowed to continue writing as a critic? Why is nobody speaking out against this? This is going to affect everybody.

MP: Did you feel like Hostel 2 got the attention it deserves? Perhaps too much controversy, focused on the wrong things?

Eli Roth: Oh believe me; I’ve got all the controversy I can handle. After awhile when you are the target, it gets old. People are getting killed for real. Why would anyone care about violence in a movie? It is simply beyond my comprehension. If you look at the history of mankind, long before movies, there was violence and torture. It’s always going to be something and I think this (violence in movies) has little to do with the real violence in the world. This war is going on and on and people keep coming back mutilated and there is no program for them to be reintegrated back into society. How is no one talking about this? Are you fucking kidding me that you are actually wasting your time talking about Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, meanwhile the Katrina damage is still not repaired. We were filming the first Hostel in Prague and there was a flood a few years back. You’d never know it. In six months, they had that city working again because every single citizen pitched in. You look at people ranting about violence in movies and games and it’s like, ‘get over yourself.’ There are so many bigger problems to worry about, how can you be focused on this. I’m genuinely shocked.

MP: What allegorical issues do you find in films?

Eli Roth: I watched Dawn of the Dead like 50 times before someone pointed out that it was George Romero’s opinion on America as one big shopping mall. Those kinds of movies interest me. I love it when you watch a movie four or five times and find you never noticed something before. I began thinking about the price of life. That’s why in Hostel, during Josh’s scene, you are supposed to feel like you are in an Al Qaeda video. No amount of money will stop them. Then the thought of someone doing it for pleasure came to mind. I feel like in America there is such an obsession with making money. In Europe, you feel it’s about family. It’s a different mentality. Here, what’s rewarded is money. Make as much money as possible. I’ve seen so many people in the film industry that have so much money and they’ve never learned how to be happy and they just want more and more money. What’s the next level of pleasure? Then there’s the corporate mentality. Soon it doesn’t matter anymore. Fuck the other guy. How are all these fucking cock suckers in the oil business getting rich off us? Whoever has the most money decides who lives or dies.

Gabe Roth: I had an experience with this. During the filming of Hostel 2, while we were in Prague, we met some people like that. They were in Prague and they were doing a world tour fucking girls in every country. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. They were exactly the characters of Todd and Stuart.

Eli Roth: Yeah. These guys had a private jet and their goal was to fuck a different girl in every country and that was their goal. They had hundreds of millions of dollars and they traveled with a private nurse. The nurse traveled with them to administer shots.

MP: Any new projects in the work?

Eli Roth: I had such a fun time doing Thanksgiving, we decided to do a full movie of trailers and call it Trailer Trash. The Cell’s script is also in the works but not done. I am going to focus on Trailer Trash for now.

Hostel part 2 DVD will be released October 23 and Hostel Director’s Cut DVD in fall.

 

-G. Brandon Hill

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