By Joseph McCabe
Photo By Sophia Quach
It?s fitting that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez?s Grindhouse open on perhaps the most religious weekend in western civilization. Because the double feature takes no prisoners as it blazes a taboo-smashing, boundary-bashing trail across the horror and exploitation genres. And premiering it on Good Friday? Well, that gives it yet another layer of irreverence.

No one does irreverence like Eli Roth. As the director of Thanksgiving, one of the fake movie trailers that run between Rodriguez?s Planet Terror and Tarantino?s Death Proof, Roth takes the slasher film as far it can possibly go in just a few short minutes. The result is arguably the most hilarious thing you?re likely to see on a movie screen this year.

Roth speaks with FEARnet at the Grindhouse press junket in LA about both his contributions to Grindhouse. For not only did he direct Thanksgiving, he acted in Death Proof upon getting a special invitation from his friend Tarantino.

?I was freaking out,? says Roth?his trademark hyperactive enthusiasm evident in his mile-a-minute speech??because I was supposed to start this other movie I was doing, called Hostel II, which Quentin is the executive producer of. I got a call from his assistant, who I?m friends with. She?s like, ?Mr. Tarantino would like you to audition for a role in Death Proof.? I?m like, ?Well, that?s really weird, because I?m not an actor.? But the role was kind of a dorky Jewish guy trying to have sex with Jordan Ladd and failing miserably. And I was like, ?Well, that?s something I?ve been trying to do for five years. That?s pretty in my zone.?

?So I was actually casting Hostel II when I had to drive down to Venice. I?ll never forget this? I drove down to Venice?an hour of traffic. There?s, like, actors waiting for me. I drive and I go to Quentin?s casting office. Of course he?s not there. It?s just a video camera. I?m like, ?Oh God.? I look at the sign-in sheet and the name ahead of me was Derek Richardson, from Hostel. He?s like, ?What are you doing here? Aren?t you, like, a big director now?? I?m like, ?Ugh, don?t ask.? I?m sitting there and I read and I could not have been worse. Everything that I don?t want to see in an audition I did. I?m picturing Quentin watching the videotape, laughing his ass off at me.

?So we actually did it again and that felt good and that was it. Then I got another call from his assistant, and she?s like, ?Mr. Tarantino would like you to audition again for a callback.? So I?m like, ?Oh, no. This is getting serious.? I?m like, ?The joke?s over, guys.? So now I have to go to his house, which is fine, because I go to his house a lot. I sit there, and there he is in his screening room. We read, and it seemed to go well, but I?m having this out of body experience because he?s right there and he?s acting out the scene with me. He gets really into it. I was like, ?This is so weird.? But it went really well. Then he?s like, ?Hey, do you want come over later? I just got a new thirty-five millimeter print of Sergio Martino?s Sex with a Smile with Marty Feldman and Barbara Bouchet!? He?s like, ?Come over and watch it!? I?m like, ?Well?sure.? So, literally, at like four o?clock I left his house for, like, four hours, then I came back at eight o?clock and it was just the two of us watching this movie. But it?s like I couldn?t mention anything about the afternoon. I couldn?t talk about it, because it was so weird.

?Then I got the call where she?s like, ?Uh, I have some bad news. Quentin really wants you to be in the movie.? What happened was the shoot got backed up and backed up and backed up, and I?m like, ?I?m leaving tomorrow for Prague.? I told Quentin, ?Look, I really want to do this, but I?m prepping Hostel II. I?m seven weeks out from shooting.? He?s like, ?No, it?ll be cool, man, you?ll do this big scene in a bar. You?ll just come down and it?ll be cool. We?ll figure it out. It?s Grindhouse, so if you disappear??

That?s what happened. I said, ?Alright.? I told everyone, ?During one week, I?m gonna evaporate. I will go to Texas and be in Quentin?s movie.? It was great because the production companies, the offices, synced up so I?d be there doing a take, and then a PA would come up to me and she?d have a bunch of designs which I?d have to approve. But it was exhausting. Afterwards I came back, and they?re like, ?Well, we want to try something?? And I?m like, ?Well, guys, here?s how Quentin does it on set???

Roth says he picked up a few tips from Tarantino that he immediately put to use on Hostel II?though, as payment, he had to insult Death Proof?s star.
?It was great. I got this last-minute master crash course in directing. I had so much fun, and Quentin really kind of let me go. There?s this scene at the bar. He?s like, ?Yeah, just make up some stuff about Kurt Russell.? I mean, I had never met Kurt Russell, and I was so excited to be in a scene with him. And there I am just rattling off insults, like ?Can we get a chicken soup for Stroker Ace over here? He fell out of his time machine.? I was going off on him, and after the first take, Quentin yells ?Cut? and the whole crew breaks out laughing. Kurt threw?a bowl full of nachos hit me in the head. He?s like, ?You dick!? I?m like, ?I?m sorry, I?m sorry?you?re my hero. I?m sorry. I wasn?t making fun of you?Quentin told me! It was his fault!?

?Then I remember for the close-up of the big monologue, we just did one take and Quentin?s like, ?Great! Let?s go to lunch.? I was like, ?Whoa, whoa, whoa. We can?t just go to lunch, dude! It?s my Quentin Tarantino monologue in close-up. I get more than one take.? Because Quentin and I are friends he?s like, ?Okay, but we?re running late and we might go into overtime. Don?t fuck it up. Alright, ready?go!??
Of course Roth?s biggest contribution to Grindhouse was Thanksgiving, which includes the most controversial shot?of a cheerleader on a trampoline falling on a knife?in the entire three-hour film. FEARnet asked Roth to give his take on the controversy.

?Look,? he laughs, ?it was kind of hilarious. Honestly, when I shot that trailer for Thanksgiving, I really thought there was no problem with anything. It just shows how genuinely out of touch I am. A full-front labial shot of a girl landing on a knife seemed like no problem to me. I was like, ?It?s an exploitation movie. It?s my job to exploit. If I don?t exploit this girl, I will have failed as a Grindhouse director. I mean these guys are expecting a lot from me.? So we showed it to the ratings board, and it was funny?that trailer wound up getting more comments than Death Proof and Planet Terror combined. But the ratings board were great. We said, ?Look, we still wanna have the moment,? and I said, ?What if we scratch the film like a scratch ticket, and literally take out the full-frontal nudity, just scratch over it in editing so it actually isn?t there, but it?s all kind of cut together with trick photography?? They were great about it. And, you know, they let me keep the turkey sex. Because someone has sex with a turkey. But it?s a cooked turkey, although it?s not really a full turkey. I mean, someone having sex with a live turkey?that would be gratuitous. But it?s someone having sex with a cooked turkey with a decapitated head on top of it. So it?s more of a turkey-human hybrid.?

Will Roth someday shoot a full-length Thanksgiving feature?

?Here?s part of the problem, he says, ?I had so much fun shooting that trailer, it?s kind of all I want to do now. Because the whole trailer is just money shots. It?s one money shot after another. It?s like killing, nudity?normally you have to write the story and write the subtext and kind of make excuses for it, but this is just pure unadulterated gratuitous sex and violence. I felt like I was thirteen years old with a video camera, and my friends were like ?Are they really letting us do this? I can?t believe it.?

?Let me tell you, I heard that Stanley Kubrick did a lot of takes on Eyes Wide Shut. It was nothing compared to the amount of takes that we did once we had that cheerleader naked on that trampoline. I mean, she was great. She got it on the first take. But we did take after take. We finished early. We had like three hours left, and we?re like, ?Well, how much film do we have? Alright, let?s just do it again.? And she just had a smile on her face the whole time. It was great.?

Does Roth have a favorite holiday movie?

?Oh, God. There?s so many good ones, you know? This is the thing? Growing up in Massachusetts, every year, in the ?80s, there was a new holiday movie. First, there was Halloween and there was Black Christmas, then there was Silent Night, Deadly Night and My Bloody Valentine, then there was April Fool?s Day, there was Friday the 13th and there was New Year?s Evil. You?re like, ?When is the Thanksgiving one coming out?? It?s so fucking obvious! Because we have fucking two full-time working pilgrim plantations in Massachusetts. You go up there and you?re like, ?Do you guys have television?? They?re like, ?We know not of this television.? You?d be like, ?Yeah, but did you see that fucking Celtics game last night?? You?d just try and, like, bust the pilgrims. They?d be like, ?We?re churning butter.? You?re like, ?Dude, how did you get here? What?s that in the parking lot? I don?t see horses. That?s your Chevette.? So that was a big deal, pilgrims in Massachusetts. I?ve just always been dying for that.

?I love My Bloody Valentine. The style and look of this one, what we were going for, is definitely? My DP and I watched The Prowler, Maniac, Silent Night, Deadly Night, and Mother?s Day. Honestly, Mother?s Day?hands down, all-time favorite. I wasn?t friends with enough girls, shockingly, to have a dance at my Bar Mitzvah, but we had arcade machines, we had Q-Bert and Frogger and Pac-Man, and we watched Mother?s Day. That?s what we did. Literally, it was, like, forty little fat Jews in the basement cheering on the decapitation. And look what happened. This is what happens when you watch violent movies growing up.?

After his experience in Death Proof, can we expect Roth to take other on-screen roles?

?Three times I?ve been in movies now, and all three times I?ve been trying to have sex on camera with Jordan Ladd; and either getting ripped in half or decapitated. Or you think I?m gonna get killed?and, probably, if they followed my storyline [in Death Proof], I?m sure Kurt Russell would have run me over. Because I?m such a dick in the movie.?

?So,? he concludes, ?I think as long as I can continue to attempt to have sex with Jordan Ladd on camera then definitely. But I?d only do it for my friends.?

FEARnet Eli Roth Video Interview