“I’ll direct any movie starring a monkey or the Olsen Twins. Preferably both.”
     – Eli Roth

“I would shoot in the Czech Republic over the States any day. There’s no unions here, so the dollar goes a lot farther. You can film with kids without the same kind of strict regulations and hassles you get in the U.S.”
     – Eli Roth

“I know your second film can make or break you, because you’re either a bona fide director or a one hit wonder.”
     – Eli Roth

“Hype can be the best thing in the world, but too much of it can kill you. There’s this weird balance between getting people excited to see the film, and not wanting to over-hype it to the point where they can’t enjoy it because they’ve been told it’s so great. Cabin Fever was definitely a victim of that, and people got really angry if it didn’t live up to their expectations that they read on the Internet. The truth is, with movies like Hostel and Cabin Fever, the Internet’s our only shot. They don’t have the big stars like War of the Worlds, and they don’t have the advertising dollars that these films do. Studios can spend $30-$40 million marketing a movie. How do you compete with that? You have to find a way to get fans to support your movie, and the Internet’s the only way to reach them directly without a huge budget. However, the danger is that if you catch that hype wave and people are excited, you have crazy expectations to live up to. People’s enjoyment of a movie is directly related to what their expectations of that movie are. If they heard Cabin Fever was some weirdo low budget scary/funny indie movie that got a distribution deal at a festival, they tended to like it much more than people who heard it was the second coming. The other danger is that people get sick of you – fast, and I know people out there are tired of reading about me.”
     – Eli Roth

“People don’t enjoy violence in real life, but they love it in their movies. And I think a lot of studio horror movies don’t want to offend anybody. If there’s anything that’s too far out there, they test it and if it offends people, they take it out. But Open Water, Wolf Creek, The Devil’s Rejects — these are movies made outside of the studio system, that don’t have a happy ending. [The studios and critics] forget that that’s what people are paying for — to be terrified and disturbed.”
     – Eli Roth

“There’s not a single instance of a horror movie actually causing any violence. People know it’s fake, that’s why they allow themselves to enjoy it. It helps them deal with their own fears, the fear of things beyond their control. People blow up abortion clinics and then blame the bible, but you would never say ‘ban the bible,’ you’d say that’s some lunatic who wants to kill people and then hide behind religion. Nobody ever died from a horror movie, in fact, it’s the opposite. It’s the single best date movie you can go to, because you’re guaranteed to be squeezing that person for the entire film. And if the movie works, your date won’t want to go to sleep alone. Horror films are an aphrodisiac. 9 months from now I predict a wave of ‘Hostel’ babies.”
     – Eli Roth

“If I don’t come home covered head to toe in fake blood then I haven’t done my job as a horror director.”
     – Eli Roth

“Failure, in my book, is someone who lives in the safety of their laptop taking shots at those who actually achieved what they have been unable to do.”
     – Eli Roth

“I’d seen all these films on the festival circuit like Audition, Ichi the Killer, Sympathy for Mr Vengeance, and I said, this is the kind of movie I want to make. Something that’s sick, and disturbing, and fucked- up… [but] I wanted it also to be a fun ride.”
     – Eli Roth

“I read it and it was like Donny kicks open the door and shoots Hitler in the face. I was like ‘Woo-hoo!’ I was so happy. It was amazing. It was like I’m going to be the new Moses”.
     – Eli Roth (on the script for “Inglourious Basterds”)

“Right now we’re at war, and then you have Hurricane Katrina, where there are people on roofs screaming for help. I have this feeling that civilization could collapse, and that if you go overseas, you could get killed, that you could be in the middle of nowhere, and that someone could kill you and no one would find you. This film is also about the dark side of human nature. Everyone’s life has a price. I want the audience to feel guilty. I want them to feel sick to their stomach, but by the end they’re screaming for blood. Everyone has this evil within them.”
     – 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

“In the box-office slump of the last year, these movies are the only movies that audiences are responding to. Both Saw II and ‘Hostel’ were made for US$4 million, and they’re beating movies that cost US$200 million dollars.”
     – Eli Roth

“I want to make movies that are interesting and different, and that make people think. I mean, I want to make a movie that they can have a great time, that they can watch over and over and over and that 30 years from now that people will still be watching.”
     – Eli Roth

“I am very lucky to have good people around me to bounce ideas off of. They bring out the best in you.”
     – Eli Roth