Interview with “Inglourious Basterd” Eli Roth
Written by Michael Varrati
Eli Roth is a Basterd.
…at least, that’s what some of the promotional posters bearing his image for Quentin Tarantino’s latest exploitation epic, Inglourious Basterds, proclaim. However, my problem with this statement (other than Tarantino’s intentional misspelling of the word “bastard”) is that it’s been my experience that Eli Roth is actually a pretty nice guy.
Known mostly to genre fans as a preeminent member of Hollywood’s “splat pack”, Roth is the director and writer of such popular horror films as Cabin Fever and the Hostel franchise, consistently pushing the envelope of visceral terror (I, for one, to this day cannot shave my face without thinking of the flesh virus from Cabin Fever). But when Quentin Tarantino came a-callin’ to send Roth off to war in this August’s WWII action blockbuster, Roth stepped out from behind the camera and gladly enlisted. After all, when Tarantino is the one drafting, there is nary an actor in Hollywood who would dodge off to Canada.
I had the rare opportunity to sit down for a brief chat with Roth exactly one week before Inglourious Basterds is set for nationwide release, and I quickly discovered that this king of splat is an entirely affable, fun to talk to sort of guy. It was clear from the onset it wouldn’t be the average question/answer sort of chat, as Roth has a talent for riffing off the conversation and intuiting where you are going before you even get there. As you’ll see from the very first, I more or less just make a statement, and Roth is off and running.
He speaks of his preparation and experience on the set of Inglourious Basterds with conviction and excitement, and when talking to him, you find it very easy to get swept up into that sentiment. He loves this movie, and though you may not have seen it yet, for the time you are talking to him…you do too. Perhaps Roth understands the concept of war propaganda a little too well, as his enthusiasm is endlessly contagious.
We discussed how he prepared for the role of Sgt. Donny Donowitz, the transition from director to actor, his relationship with Tarantino, and even took a minute to address the long standing rumor of whether his fake trailer, Thanksgiving, (which was created for Tarantino & Rodriguez’s Grindhouse), was ever going to emerge in the legitimate turkey basted flesh.
Without further adieu, my interview with Eli Roth…a nice guy, and real Basterd:
Michael Varrati: You are generally known as a director, although you’ve had a few minor acting roles in your own films, as well as a part in Tarantino’s Death Proof, but this is something of a big transition for you into a featured role…
Eli Roth: There’s nothing that I’ve really done before that I considered true acting. I love acting, and I’d studied acting, and of course, I’d worked with actors for my career. However, Quentin [Tarantino] recognized that I have a talent for acting that I had really, up until now, not mined or pushed myself to dig into, and you know, I never really had a reason to. My whole dream was to write, direct, and produce my own movies…and it was actually my role in Cabin Fever that made Quentin put me in Death Proof, which was actually me replacing another actor who had to cancel last minute. So, just this one small part in my own movie led to Death Proof. On Death Proof, Quentin’s direction to me literally was “We have a couple minutes ‘til lunch, just don’t fuck it up.”
I was there as his friend, but here’s me in a role in a bar in a Tarantino movie, and I said, “At least give me a second take” and he said, “Oh look, Mr. Actor!” He was making fun of me for doing take two, but he got it, and said, “Fine, you want a second take, you’ve got 30 seconds until we get a meal penalty.” So that was what it was like on Death Proof, but he was so happy with what I did, he said, “Damn it, there I am in the editing room, and you’re the one who’s killing every line…every time I cut to you, you’ve got it…you’re saying it exactly like I want it done. You understand the rhythm of my dialogue perfectly and you have a real screen presence…I want you to play this role.” He also said it can’t be like Death Proof, it had to be 360 degrees for the character.
…and I’ve always wanted the challenge of diving into a part, and I wanted to do like a Robert DeNiro or Peter Sellers…fully immerse myself in it. I dropped everything to do it, too…I put on 40 lbs of muscle, I hit the gym every day, and I was researching the role. I’m a Jewish guy from Boston, so I flew back to Boston and prepared the character, and then, you know, went off to war.
MV: …and that was really going to be my next question for you. Obviously, the set of preparations you’d make as a director would be TOTALLY different from how you would prepare as an actor for this type of role. Can you speak a little more on that?
Eli Roth: It’s completely different! But, I wanted to be the dream actor that I wish I had, and I said, “I’m going to dive into this.”
Quentin having that faith in me, knowing that I could do it, made me push myself harder on this than anything I’ve ever done in my life, because it’s not my comfort zone…and I like being out of my comfort zone. I like pushing myself to do something I am not used to doing and that I was a little scared to do.
There’s a sequence of me cutting hair that ultimately got cut from the movie, but I went and trained to cut hair for the part. So, when we showed up in Berlin, the first rehearsal we all sat around a table and Quentin went around the table and said, “…and who are YOU?” and you had to talk about yourself for an hour, and that’s no joke. You had to know the character the way you know your best friend, and when you’re with your best friend, you know how your best friend is going to react if a girl walks by, if someone who hates him walks by…if a dog walks by…you know that person, inside and out. You know what they wear, you know what they drink, you know if they smoke or not…and you, as an actor, have to know your character that same way, and know what your relationship is with all the other guys. This was before we even started reading the scenes, it was just discussions like that…and I just went on and on for hours, and Quentin loved it.
MV: So, it sounds like you really achieved the goal you set for yourself to bring this character forward. Was it intimidating for you since, as you said yourself, this was your first major role, to be put on-screen next to someone like Brad Pitt, who has been nominated for an Academy Award, and is possibly the most famous living actor working today?
Eli Roth: No, it was not. Because, the truth is, when you’re with someone who is as superb an actor as Brad Pitt, it’s easy. He’s such a nice guy, and he’s so cool, he makes you feel comfortable right away…and he’s always in it, he’s right on the money, every line. It’s difficult to act with someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, or with someone who is a diva…but when you’re with someone who is as cool, fun, and easy-going as Brad, you have a great time doing it, and you get really into it. Brad and I stayed in character the entire shoot, we didn’t break…and Quentin loved it, he said, “Man, these guys have been in my head for ten years, and now I get to hang out with them!”
But, I also knew that if I was going to be holding the screen with Brad Pitt, I really had to bring my A-game. It couldn’t just be me putting on the muscle and going crazy with a bat, I know people are going to be judging me and grading me on an extra difficult curve, because they know I’m friends with Quentin, and they know me as a director. So, right away, when people see me when I come out that cave…you’re going to see I’m in the zone, I can really do it, and there’s a reason Quentin cast me, and no one else, for the part. He’s friends with a lot of people, but I’m the one he wanted, because he said I was right for the role. You have to see the look of pain, anguish, and fury in this guy’s eyes…he’s a very visible character, and a lot of the dialogue we shot got cut, so you have to look in this guy’s face and see his pain, and sympathize with him.
MV: Not only did you have to prepare for this role in the general sense, but it’s a Word War II period piece. Was there an added layer of difficulty in prepping for this kind of war epic?
Eli Roth: The difficulty was there was just more research. I talked to some surviving World War II veterans, some Jewish guys from Boston, to see what it was like. Even though it’s period, it doesn’t feel period because Quentin writes such contemporary human characters…they don’t feel like they’re from another time. What was difficult was making the emotions real, dredging up the most painful experiences of my life that I had buried for years and years, thinking I was never going to touch again, and confronting them. To get yourself as close to them as possible, as if they happened ten minutes ago, and we all can do that, we all have things that we have been embarrassed about or upset about that you never want to even mention again, and you have to go to that place to bring out what’s necessary for this particular part. So, that was really a hard part.
But what helped me, in a strange way, was that I was also shooting the movie within the movie, Nation’s Pride, the Nazi propaganda film that we all go to the premiere of in the last act of the film. Right after I filmed the beating scene, I had to go right into directing and shooting Nation’s Pride, which is a full battle movie…it has to look like a full-on World War II battle, and at first I thought, “God, how am I going to have the energy to do it?” But after that beating scene, I was so emotionally drained, that in a strange way, doing Nation’s Pride flushed it all out of my system, and cleansed the palate. I forced my brain and every shred of creativity I had to shift over and shoot this propaganda movie, which I had felt such intense pressure to out do myself both as an actor, but also as a director. I felt like this had to be the greatest thing I’ve ever directed, because it’s got to hold the screen with Inglourious Basterds and in the scene, Hitler’s attending the premiere, so I felt that this also had to impress Hitler!
MV: Which, impressing Hitler is no small feat, I imagine.
Eli Roth: Yeah! Well, Goebbels made eight hundred movies and I wanted it to be believable when Hitler and Goebbels are watching the film, when Hitler says, “This is your finest film to date,” you have to believe it.
I flew my brother Gabriel out, because I was cutting his hair in that scene that got cut, and he was my second unit director. So all the shots I had, I split and gave to him, and we were just a block apart from each other, running twenty-five extras back and forth between us and splitting resources. In two days, we got Quentin one hundred and forty camera set-ups, with full battle stuff- guys falling off buildings, getting shot with squibs, machine gun fire…it was the fastest and hardest I’ve ever worked on anything, but it was so much fun, it was exhilarating. I then shot a third day with Daniel Brühl, and then I was editing. So I was working the whole time, either as an actor preparing the next scene, or preparing as a director. By Christmas, I gave Quentin a five-and-a-half minute sequence, and he was able to then write that whole last chapter and choreograph his camera moves to certain moments in the film, because now he had Nation’s Pride as a piece, and he could watch it, and see what he had.
He was so happy. He said, “If I had done this, it would have been eight shots, and you made it two hundred.” Doing that was really my thank you to Quentin, for everything that he’s done for me.
MV: Well, it also is cool in the respect that you were involved in the film not just as an actor, but also creatively.
Eli Roth: When Quentin was writing it, we are really close friends, and I’m Jewish…so he could call me and propose hypothetical situations…like, “Would a Jew ever forgive a Nazi for the Holocaust? Would a Jew give absolution?” Of course the answer is absolutely not, that’s a Christian concept. Jews, we get more angry about stuff…the whole notion of absolution is a Catholic concept, we don’t believe in it. We’re coming from a place where everyone in the world tried to exterminate us and wipe us off the planet, and they were doing it very successfully. So, I invited him to Passover Seder so he could see the Jewish point of view and psychology, and hear us talk about how we were slaves in Egypt, the pharaoh, and what we went through in the Holocaust. We always talk about that, and we always talk about the world today, and what we’re doing to end oppression. Are we doing enough? How can we find freedom for people all over the world?
Quentin had story ideas, and I felt very proud that I could advise him psychologically on how Jewish people think about certain matters.
MV: Switching gears, many of our readers are fans of your work, and I would be doing them a disservice if I didn’t ask what your next projects are going to be…obviously you’ll probably return to directing, will there be more acting in your future as well?
Eli Roth: I certainly want to direct next. A year ago, if someone had asked me what I was doing, I would have said, “I am definitely, 100% starting production on Endangered Species [a sci-fi epic wherein humanity is the titular endangered species, Roth first hinted he was making this to Empire Magazine in May, and beyond that, details are scant].
But then, Quentin calls me with this incredible opportunity to go off and be in Inglourious Basterds. I love directing, and that’s what I do…but I really love acting, and I’d love to have a career like Ben Stiller where I can act and direct, and I think I will gradually start writing roles for myself. Quentin said, “You now have permission to do that, because you now have gone toe-to-toe with the best and have proven that you can really do a magnificent job.” So, next I really want to do Endangered Species, but it’s a much bigger and more complex movie…but I’m ready to dive into it. Also, somewhere in the future I’m trying to figure out when I can do Thanksgiving. I really want to do that too.
MV: I know everyone would really love to see it!
Eli Roth: No one more than me, believe me! I’ve had that movie in my head since I was eighteen years old, and making the trailer just got me more excited to make it.
MV: Thanks again, Eli, for your time. It is greatly appreciated, and we here at Fatally Yours are glad you took a moment to talk with us.
Eli Roth: It was great talking, and I’ll be seeing you soon!
Inglourious Basterds available on Amazon
Watch the Inglourious Basterds trailer:
Popularity: 4% [?]
[ ‹‹ Killer Shorts (2009) Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) ›› ]
2006 2007 2008 2009 awesome 80s bad movies Best of bloody book review boring brutal campy creepy disturbing Fatally Yours film festival fun ghosts gore haunted horror comedy Horror Literature humorous independent insanity interview low-budget madness monsters murders News psychological release info revenge sequel serial killer short film slasher supernatural unique vampires violent Women in Horror Worst of Zombies