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Eli Roth

Eli Roth Quotes

Film director

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Famous Eli Roth Quotes

“You have to trust your instincts and hope the fans like what you do, but you don't gut check with the fans. If we're going to make a series, people are going to have a lot of opinions and if there's one overwhelming majority or one thing you continuously hear repeated from the fans, you certainly take that into account going into next season.”

“I think in a post-9/11 world, with the images coming back from Iraq, everybody knows more and more people who are going over there... the images on the YouTube phenomenon where the violence is so immediate. Direct people need something stronger to respond to. I think that there's definitely a wave of directors - who are labelled the splat pack - who really, really care about making great scary movies.”

“The difference is in Hostel it's in the theatre - it's in public but it's in a private place. You have to actively make a choice to want to go see it. It's not being forced on anyone. Whereas 24 you can be flipping channels and it's right there in your living room. Anyone has access to that. But that just shows how mainstream it is and how people are seeing this stuff on YouTube. People are scared of it. This is a subject matter that everyone's talking about and everyone's thinking about, particularly in American culture.”

“It's the difference between hunting a lion and hunting a deer. If someone hunts a lion, it's like: "Wow, they're brave!" But if they're hunting a deer it's like: "That poor deer!" I know that. I know that guys getting killed is horrible but people have seen it before. You've seen The Evil Dead. With girls, it's like: "I don't want to see that happening..." I know that.”

“Women became almost our bigger audience. Teenage girls went crazy for my movie. I saw it. I went to theatres all over and there were gangs of girls going and screaming. There were kids that were 10 or 11 years old when September 11 happened. They've been told for years they're going to get killed, they're going to get blown up. Every time you go on an airplane, X-ray your shoes because you're going to get blown up. Terror alert orange, don't travel. So, people have a reaction and they want to scream. Horror movies have become the new date movie.”

“The censors were great. There's always back and forth. But it's 'Hostel 2', it's not 'Happy Feet 2'. Everybody knows what Hostel is and people that are going to see it are going for more of what they loved in the original. No one is accidentally going to walk into it, no parent is accidentally going to take their child, and we're not pretending what it is in the advertising. We're saying it's very violent, it's very scary and a continuation of the first one.”

“I like movies that work on two levels - like The Simpsons, kids can watch it and adults can watch it. Teenagers can watch Hostel and if they want to see a blood and guts violent movie they're going to have a great time. They're going to scream and yell, it's a great date movie because they're going to squeeze their date and their date is probably going to be too scared to go home... so you take them home and put on Dirty Dancing and everybody wins.”

“Quentin [Tarantino] called me and said: "Yeah, you've got to be in my movie. You've got to be in Death Proof." But he made me audition. I was like: "Dude, I don't even want to do this..." So I left the casting of Hostel: Part II to drive to Venice, where Quentin was holding his casting, and the person ahead of me was Derek Richardson from Hostel 1 and he was like: "Dude, what are you doing here?" I said: "Don't ask!"”