Eli Roth Quotes

“Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.”

— Eli Roth

“Las Vegas is a 24-hour city. It never stops.”

— Eli Roth

You know, I'm from Boston, and in Boston, you are born with a baseball bat in your hand.

— Eli Roth

“I need to eliminate 'like' from my vocabulary. I begin sentences with, 'That's seriously like ... ' I hear myself talking in this Los Angeles high-school student kind of way, and I hate it.”

— Eli Roth

“People want to be disturbed when they go see a horror movie.”

— Eli Roth

“The best movies now are called 'thrillers.' Because if you use the word 'horror,' people's associations are straight-to-video crap.”

— Eli Roth

What's important for me is staying healthy.

— Eli Roth

“Once I got over the fear of writing female characters, it actually came quite easily and I was really happy with it. I just thought about girls I knew really, really well and I'd just have conversations with them and tried to relay how they talk about certain things.”

— Eli Roth

“'Beatrice Cenci' was an amazing film. If it were released today it'd win Best Picture. It's so well done, it's so contemporary, and the filmmaking is so smart.”

— Eli Roth

“The one negative to horror is that it's always law of diminishing returns. When you go in the funhouse, the ride is never scary the second time. You will never have that pure experience as when you first watch it.”

— Eli Roth

“For a long time, I had a crazy girl dating habit.”

— Eli Roth

“There's a crazy, false notion that audiences are not patient or will not watch a story, that you have to put in a scare every ten minutes. But I always thought that was insane.”

— Eli Roth

“I love movies. I mean, I really, really love movies.”

— Eli Roth

You know, the best thing you can say about a horror film is, 'Don't see it.'

— Eli Roth

I feel like in the '90s, horror just lost its way and everything became so safe and watered-down.

— Eli Roth

I have so many different projects, I hear voices in my head - the characters talking all at once - and I have to write to make them stop.

— Eli Roth

“I never put out a vanilla edition of a DVD.”

— Eli Roth

“Movie stars need to retain some of that mystique if you are a big movie star.”

— Eli Roth

Well, anytime I make a movie, I like to load it up with more things than you could ever catch on the first viewing.

— Eli Roth

“A comedy can actually get funnier and funnier. Even though you know the joke, you enjoy it so much, it's the facial expression, you laugh. The laugh doesn't wear off. It could be with you for thirty years.”

— Eli Roth

I love movies that are just straight-up exploitation, but the ones that endure and the ones that last are the ones where the filmmakers put in that extra level of thought; after 25 years you put them on in front of an audience, and they'll respond to it and enjoy it.

— Eli Roth

“I saw 'Alien' when I was 8 years old. To me, it was like a combination of Jaws and Star Wars, and that's the movie that made me want to be a director.”

— Eli Roth

“One of the great joys of life, now that you can afford a nice suit, is getting one for free. That's why I like to do press tours - I always say making movies is just an excuse to get free clothing.”

— Eli Roth

“What I've always thought I would do is make a bunch of movies and then stop to teach for awhile. And then just teach at film schools - you know, teach children.”

— Eli Roth

“When you make a film for a million and a half dollars and it opens at 20 million, the next question out of everyone's mouth is, 'When's the next one, when's the next one, when's the next one?'”

— Eli Roth

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.

— Eli Roth

I've always wanted to be involved in an exorcism movie. But I thought, "How do you make something scarier than The Exorcist?" The answer is you don't. But that doesn't mean you can't make something that is original and interesting.

— Eli Roth

“Everybody has to know where they're coming from, what they're doing, why they're doing it, who they are. These are essentials.”

— Eli Roth

“For the fee of $10,000, anyone could be escorted to a room, handed a loaded gun and offered another human to kill. The concept made me nauseous. But it also felt real, and rang bells with my more cynical side.”

— Eli Roth

“If you don't want to be scared in a horror film, don't close your eyes. Close your ears.”

— Eli Roth

“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.”

— Eli Roth

I don't want people to feel: "Why am I watching this? It's sick and sadistic." I want people to watch and think it's scary but they can't wait to see what happens next. I also wanted to make a movie that was watchable.

— Eli Roth

“So when I was beating the guy, I started thinking, 'What if I was Hannah Montana?' ... And little do they know that that's why I look so insane ... I'm torturing myself with thoughts of, 'How could I actually pull off being a high school student and a pop star at night?'”

— Eli Roth

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.

— Eli Roth

“I'll direct any movie starring a monkey or the Olsen Twins. Preferably both.”

— Eli Roth

“Imagine trying to relive your worst break-up, your worst fight, the most painful death of a loved one, and just really relive it step by step, and bring it up and apply it to the scene you're in.”

— Eli Roth

“I knew how to act and had studied acting and enjoyed it, but I'd never pushed myself to really perform as an actor, and create a role, and have the whole character's backstory.”

— Eli Roth

When I was filming the death scene [in Inglourious Basterds], and I'm killing somebody, I had to work myself up.

— Eli Roth

“I've always wanted to make a big apocalypse movie. I love 28 Weeks Later, I think it's great but Cell is totally different. It's about people's dependence on technology, the collapse of society and watching everything fall apart. That's something I've always wanted to do, which I believe it can!”

— Eli Roth

“I want it to be able to hold up in 30 years' time. So, I'm really thinking about everything.”

— Eli Roth

“I want a movie that 30 years from now, people can look back and see it as a reflection of where the culture was at - as a barometer of the culture.”

— Eli Roth

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.

— Eli Roth

“In musical theater, if you have a song, it has to advance the plot. If you have a song in a musical and it does not advance the plot, it gets dropped.”

— Eli Roth

“Sometimes you have this tragedy which turns into an incredible opportunity.”

— Eli Roth

“I want to have an ending where people say: "That's the most shocking ending I've ever seen in a mainstream horror film."”

— Eli Roth

“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!"”

— Eli Roth

“Quentin Tarantino assistant called me and said: "I have good news and bad news. The good news is you got the part, the bad news is you have to do it." I was like: "Oh Jesus, when am I supposed to do this?" I was prepping Hostel.”

— Eli Roth

“Shooting at Quentin Tarantino movie was like a masterclass in directing. Although I went back literally right into rehearsal, started shooting ... while I was doing it I had to write my Grindhouse trailer and I added two days of shooting. My brother was producing Hostel and the Grindhouse trailer and I was like: "Gabe, just figure this out!"”

— Eli Roth

“The world is changing. Social media is a way to sell movies and to build a fan base. The truth is that you have followers because they know you are into it and you're funny and you like it. I think it's great.”

— Eli Roth

“We live in an age now where so many people watch movies based on what Netflix recommends. It learns your taste and they really understand viewer habits.”

— Eli Roth