Original subtitles

All right, welcome to the producer's commentary.

This is Eli Roth.

I'm wearing my producer's hat now,

and I'm joined by my fellow producer, Chris Briggs.

Hey.

And my brother, Gabe.

Hi.

And actually, the reason Gabe is in here

is because Gabe shot all the behind-the-scenes on the movie,

and he was with us for the entire shoot in Prague.

And, you know, I thought it'd be fun to have him on the commentary.

I'll be playing the role of Mike Fleiss today.

Yeah, Mike Fleiss, our other producer, unfortunately,

was unable to make it.

I think he's in France.

He's trapped with the riots for his show The Bachelor.

Le Bachelor.

So here we are in our opening title sequence.

And just so everyone knows,

this commentary is really going to be more about

the technical stuff of making the movie.

You know, the locations, where it was shot.

Just so it's not really going to be about

how I got the movie made or any of that kind of stuff.

It's just going to be more from the producerial angle.

So this opening title sequence we shot,

this was all done on a stage.

And we had an A camera set and a B camera set,

and this was actually shot at the same time we shot The Brothel.

And that's Cuba in the background.

Ya-cub.

Yeah, he was handsome.

He was our handsome PA.

Actually, Cuba, we called him Una-cuba because he started as a PA,

but we realized he could do everything.

And when Jay Hernandez is getting dragged up and down the halls,

we needed like hands scraping and feet dragging.

And we were unable to shoot, we were shooting another scene with Jay,

so we took a second camera and dragged Cuba up and down the halls.

So you'll see him several times in the movie making appearances.

Milan Khadima, our director of photography.

This was the first movie he shot.

This was his first film as a DP, and I thought he did an awesome job.

Milan was fantastic, and he was really excited to have his first starring role.

But more importantly, I got nervous when Cuba, who was our handsome PA,

would take Milan and me on like drag racing things up and down the street

because he was really proud of his sports car.

So you didn't know about this at the time,

but you're pretty lucky that no one got in a wreck and got killed.

Yeah, Cuba was the PA who drove something like an $80,000 BMW.

I don't really know how that happened.

So here we are in our Amsterdam exterior, and this was in Prague.

This was just a building that we saw in Prague.

It's Mike Fleiss' family right there.

Yeah, right in the bottom.

That's his son, Aaron, his daughter, Devin, and his wife, Alex,

just walking by at the bottom of the frame.

And now, Chris, let's talk about the coffeehouse scene.

We had written a longer version, which it's going to put as a deleted scene

on one of these days in the DVD.

But, you know, you're very helpful.

Chris is really also a tremendous writer.

Tremendous.

One of the things we did was we rewrote a lot of stuff

kind of the night before, right before we shot it.

Well, I think we were, you know, always sensitive to the fact

of getting to know these main characters, doing it efficiently.

And so we played with some stuff, and we ended up --

I think this scene is shorter than what we wrote for efficiency's sake.

But this guy is going to be appearing in Playgirl in January, so look for that.

That's a little promotional tie-in.

Do you remember when we auditioned that guy, and he came in?

He was so funny that he just started talking, and we just started laughing, and he just started laughing.

And when he came on the set, he was such a sweet guy.

He kind of really had this sort of gentle, giant quality about him.

But he was like a cross between -- you know, what's it, Robbie Coltrane's character in Harry Potter?

Hagrid.

He's sort of like a cross between Hagrid and Jack Elam from "Cannibal Run."

I think we just missed a sensational cameo, by the way, but --

Oh, okay, yeah, that was me and Gabe in the -- that was me and Gabe in the coffeehouse, playing the mass holes.

Yeah, I got to tell you, actually, for that scene, I was really excited to have a second shot.

Because in "Cabin Fever," you had me fire a gun, and I really didn't know what I was doing, and I looked like an idiot.

But I had done a lot of research over the years in college for that role with my roommate, George Hunter Doppelis.

And so I really knew what I was doing that time, handling the bong.

So thank you for giving me a chance to redeem myself.

No, I thought you did great. I thought you were great in both of them.

So this was a club called Mecca, and obviously the idea was that we wanted Amsterdam to look really, really high-tech and very colorful,

and that's why there's lasers, and we put those monitors in.

There's Dan Frisch, our co-producer, his fanny pack man.

The funny thing is, some people think that, oh, come on, you know, who would go to a club in Amsterdam and wear a fanny pack?

But I did, when I traveled around Europe, so --

Dan Frisch, I would go out to the clubs with him in Prague, and his whole thing was he would wear a fanny pack,

'cause if the girls could get past that, then he knew that she was a keeper.

He's like, "I don't care. I'll wear the fanny pack, and if they like the fanny pack, I got nothing to worry about."

The fanny pack's where you keep your passport, keep your money, keep your condoms.

He was a big proponent of the fanny pack, and I actually am thinking about turning back to the fanny pack days.

You're going back to the pack?

Yeah.

This girl, Veronica, we called her Veronica Boots 'cause she wore these really shaggy boots.

She's great. She came in to audition. She actually did a really good job in the audition, but she wasn't quite right.

Legolas fighting.

Yeah, this guy, if you notice when Derek shoves him, he refers to him as a faggot-ass elf, because this guy showed up with this crazy kind of Legolas hair,

which we all thought was, you know, just kind of awesome.

And we actually cast him because of his hair, and apparently he used to not have that hair.

That's like a new thing with him. That's what one of the PAs knew him from years ago.

And there's the fanny pack payoff.

There we go. Right there, Prague Castle in the background, and we had to frame that out so you wouldn't know that they're in Prague,

thinking that they're in Amsterdam.

Chris, did you go to Amsterdam when you were backpacking?

I did. I spent a lot of time in hostels, and I think Amsterdam...

Well, there's a good scene coming up that I'll wait to talk about.

Let's talk about Amsterdam. That's Paula Wilde playing Monique the hooker.

Now, what's her professional background?

Well, I'll tell you, Chris, Paula Wilde is the biggest porn star in the Czech Republic.

And when we were casting that role, there she is, and look at the little old man on the left, having a good time.

A little bad continuity theater.

You know, Paula is the biggest porn star in the Czech Republic,

and it was actually Milan, our director of photography, who suggested that we cast her.

And I thought she did a great job.

But she said that normally in her movie she plays like a dominatrix.

But, you know, I thought she was really good as kind of the sweet hooker

who had this oddly robotic quality about her.

This brothel is a set that we built, but it's replicated from a brothel we saw in Japan

that my production designer, Franco Carboni, had photos of, of this brothel that was just like from another planet.

And we said that we wanted to make it stylized and different and didn't want it to look like the typical horror house with velvet walls and tacky gold photos and stuff.

It's just this kind of weird futuristic place, which I thought would be a nice contrast to what we later see in Slovakia.

You know, Amsterdam is purposely really, really bright and colorful.

And then, you know, after Oli disappears and his orange jacket goes, the color slowly drains away until the end.

It's, you know, bleak and ashen and dark red.

You watch you pain.

You watch you pain.

And like he had this shirt that said Captain Hooker's, which is a complete coincidence.

But yeah, this bedroom is actually, we replicated it from this design of this Japanese brothel that we saw.

I just, I just couldn't believe that when I saw it, I thought it was really cool.

Paula Wilde has like an oddly robotic quality to her here, which I think is really cool that it sort of makes you feel like she's done this thousands of times before.

But so we should say that the, you know, this, the whole project started, I mean, I talk about how I'd seen this website that Harry Knowles showed me.

But after Texas Chainsaw Massacre came out, you know, I had a meeting with Mike Fleiss and with Chris.

And Chris was the one who said, you know, I would love to set a horror movie in kind of the backpacking universe.

Well, I'd spent, you know, basically a year of my life traveling around and staying at hostels.

And, you know, this was in the early 90s.

And I think the world was a safer, more carefree place as a, you know, as an American to travel in.

And, and I don't think that's true anymore.

But even then, you would get yourself into these crazy situations feeling like, oh, you know, you're totally invincible.

But you'd find yourself staying in bizarre hostels or, you know, not being able to find a place to stay in a certain town and staying in someone's basement.

I mean, just these things that like you.

That's Philip Whaley, our line producer filling in for the German guy, I should say.

So things in retrospect, you realize, fuck, that was a dangerous situation or things could have potentially gone so wrong.

And I just thought that was a fun setup for a movie that I hadn't seen.

That's Roman Ioneska, our second assistant director.

It's actually our first, our Czech first AD throwing the bottles.

Roman makes several cameos in the movie.

Now, Chris, do you want to talk about this scene?

Well, this happened to me.

You were having sex in a hostel?

I was having sex on top.

No, I actually came into a hostel when I was staying in Amsterdam back like it was my junior year of college.

There was a couple having sex and a creepy dude, and I was freaked out.

And I was immediately going to walk out of the room.

And the guy was telling, there was another guy in the room, just said, no, it's cool.

They're cool with it.

Don't worry about it.

And it was late and I was tired.

So I said, all right, screw it.

And I crashed about five feet away from him.

Now, if you notice behind Derek Richardson's head in the next shot,

you'll see behind him on the left, there's a poster for the Bakunas band.

And behind Jay is the Astredam poster.

And the idea is, obviously, there's sex all around these guys, but they can never quite get it.

What, Bakunas is sex?

Just a second.

There's a very medically accurate description of a clitoris, I think, that Derek Richardson just did.

This was in the mental hospital, wasn't it?

This was a set in the mental hospital.

Yes, it was.

Because, you know, the stage is where we built the two sets, the main torture room, just those rooms.

But at this mental hospital, which there was a whole wing that was closed down.

You know, in the downstairs, we were in the tunnels.

And upstairs, there were just these giant empty rooms.

And Franco completely built out this set here and put the scaffolding in.

And this couple, actually, they performed sex in public.

That's their thing.

That's what they do.

So for them to do it on a movie set was kind of not really a big deal.

So they're performance artists.

Yes, they are.

As are many of the performance artists in this film.

But the poster that's behind them in the wall, that, you know, we wanted to originally get a poster for Huey Lewis Sports.

Because Chris and I very much like Huey Lewis.

Well, I'm a bigger fan of the news, but...

Right.

And I actually like Huey.

But they don't have Huey Lewis solo posters.

So we thought we'd get a poster for sports.

Then we couldn't find one.

So we decided to create our own band named after our accountant, Mark Bakunas.

Now these photos, we shot these in Chris's apartment.

Was it like that at your apartment a lot when we were living in Prague, Chris?

You know, I live a very exciting lifestyle, no matter where I am.

And Prague was no different.

So I'd have to say no.

It was like that once when there was a photo shoot when girls were paid to go and do that.

And other than that, no.

It was very boring.

Now if you look behind Alex, there's a poster of a bodybuilder.

And that guy is actually the guy who later in the movie gets his head crushed in.

These girls, we saw them out at a club.

One of the girls in those photographs, we were looking at the photos and we started zooming in.

And I was like, what is that?

Is that a tampon string?

Something's going on.

We didn't want to tell Chris because they were shooting it on his bed.

Did you change your sheets after that, Chris?

Oh God, I hope so.

I thought you were going to sell those sheets on eBay.

They go crazy for any foreigner.

You just take them.

So here we are with our train exterior.

This is some terrific B camera work.

Roman, our first AD, really wants to direct.

So I kind of put him in charge of shooting all the second unit stuff.

And, you know, it was a tight shoot even at 40 days.

It was 30 locations.

It was very ambitious to try and get everything.

And so you'd send out a unit just to go out and get other shots.

And these guys just did such an awesome job.

You know, Martine, our B camera, who shot our B camera.

And Roman really, really, I think, helped make the movie great.

They did all the stuff of, like, going by those rooms when Jay is getting dragged, they shot.

And all the shots of the train exterior really looked beautiful.

Athor did his own shaving for this scene.

He shaved his own ass?

Yes.

Some people think that Athor actually has a pretty nice ass.

I'm not one of them.

But one of the reasons, I think, is he was actually a national team handball player in Iceland.

So he's a very athletic young Icelander.

I've been to see him play handball in Iceland.

It's a rough sport.

And it's, you know, you use your legs a lot and you would get a very shapely bottom from playing it.

Yeah.

And Athor was very proud to show it off.

But this was all shot on a set.

The sets were the brothel, the two torture rooms, that cleaning room, and then the train.

I mean, it's just too tight to film in a train.

So, you know, that's why we shot this stuff green screen in Bob Kurtzman at Precinct 13, Compton, the visual effects.

Now this scene, you'll notice Derek's voice is a little rough.

We shot this the day after we shot Derek's torture, two days spent in the torture scene.

So this guy here, Jan Vlasak, has just spent two days torturing Derek.

So there was a bit of residual anger from Richardson.

Derek really didn't have a voice because he had spent two days screaming.

And then when he put his hand on his leg to get Jan's reaction, Derek was off camera and just started screaming at him.

Now, he was pretty upset with Jan that day.

I mean, he didn't want to go near him and Jan had really freaked him out.

I mean, they liked each other and they had tremendous respect for each other.

But Derek felt that Jan was pulling his hair a little too much.

Jan's career might never be the same after this movie, but before doing this movie, he's actually considered one of the foremost Czech actors.

I mean, we actually saw him do Shakespeare in Czech this summer.

He's an incredible actor.

I mean, he's not known.

He hasn't been in, I don't think, many films that any Americans would have seen before.

He was in like the Dune miniseries.

I mean, he doesn't like doing movies.

He prefers doing theater and he's always in a play.

So he can never really take the time to shoot a film.

So I would not go hungry.

I like to have a connection with something that died for me.

I appreciate it more.

Well, I'm vegetarian.

The thing about this movie that's different from other American movies that shoot in Prague is other American movies fake it for being America.

They say that they're shooting in Prague because it's cheaper than shooting in America.

But Derek snapped.

He was upset.

You can really see it.

But here we were shooting, you know, and playing it for Eastern Europe and using Eastern European actors and otherwise normally they play like, you know, busboy number three and their voice gets dubbed out.

But here we could cast people that were playing Eastern European and you could really just get great actors and get great performances because you weren't, they weren't pretending to be American.

We weren't going to dub them later.

They could really be themselves.

I should say also at this point that, I mean, philosophically from a producing standpoint, we wanted to invest the locals in every way we could.

I mean, so many American productions will bring over large amounts of crew, you know, from the U.S.

And we didn't do that.

And so even to hire a local cinematographer the way we did and really to invest the local crew was something we wanted to do from the outset.

And I think it, you know, ended up really helping the production.

Absolutely.

The crew had such a great time in this movie.

I remember after we wrapped, people didn't want, people didn't want to leave.

They were sad the shoot was over and they said they had never had that before.

And, you know, I loved, you know, working with them.

I thought the Czech crews were amazing.

And I remember, Chris, you were the one, you know, we both kind of independently researched and, you know, you were, you know, you were the one who was saying that Prague, you know, is really the best place to shoot if you're going to go in Eastern Europe.

It's not to knock.

I mean, you know, there's certainly a lot of productions going to Bulgaria and Romania.

It's not to knock these places and I haven't shot there.

But, you know, basically people would say, well, if you go to these other countries, it's going to be a little bit cheaper.

I just, after doing the research, I thought there were maybe some hidden costs.

I mean, we knew that in Prague it might be a little more expensive, but we knew that the actors would have a good time.

It would be easier to get actors to go there and just to feel really certain with the crews and what you saw was what you got.

And we obviously worked with a great company over there, IPC.

IPC, Dan Frisch and Philip Whaley.

You know, who were great and it just, it couldn't have gone more smoothly.

And, uh, so I would go back in a second and I think, you know, you would too.

And Prague provides you with locations like this.

Yeah, and this is the first place we saw it.

And one thing I like about that driving sequence before is that shot of that smokestack.

You see a lot of smokestack imagery kind of foreshadowing what's going to happen.

And Josh making that joke about, oh yeah, let's go visit some factories.

And it's actually what they all wind up doing, visiting some factories.

Um, it just happens to be a factory where they torture people.

So this is--

Chesky Krumlov.

Chesky Krumlov.

This, this village, um, you know, when I scouted the place, when I, when I went to Prague, um,

which is really a year ago, kind of right after I finished the script and sort of just pre-scouted everywhere.

Uh, the village, that was, that's what sold me on going to Prague.

I was like, we have to shoot here.

And this is an old, this is a monastery actually.

And if you notice now here, uh, we did, uh, Brian Best, my sound designer.

I should talk about Brian at some point and his terrific design he did.

Um, we, we started like in the, now it feels like springtime.

There's really, really happy birds.

You hear like springtime birds chirping, but as things get worse, the birds sort of die away.

And all you hear are like crows, like, ah, ah, and wind.

And did all these little things to just make it feel colder and like it's fall.

This, uh, monastery is interesting just because initially when you walk in, it's quite beautiful with all the frescoes in the wall.

But, uh, if you look closer, there's a lot of cracks running down the walls and it's kind of falling apart.

And it was also not far from the Tarazin concentration camp.

Yeah, this is right down the, actually, you know what's funny is the slaughterhouse.

Where the, the exterior of that factory, the old sugar factory, which you'll see later where they get taken to, is right next to this.

And it's right down the street from, uh, Tarazin, the, the concentration camp, as you said.

So Gabe, this happened to you, uh, the Pulp Fiction thing.

That's right.

Uh, I was traveling to Europe, uh, and first night I get there I walk into a hostel and, uh, I expect to have some real great foreign experience.

And it's a bunch of backpackers sitting around watching Pulp Fiction on TV.

And I thought, jeez, I traveled all the way to Europe just to see people watching Pulp Fiction again.

And I thought that was pretty funny. I'm glad you put it in there.

And I like the fact that you have it in there.

But it's still cool that, like, it's like, you know, you see the worldwide power of Tarantino.

Yeah.

It's universal. People love it everywhere.

And here we meet the girls, uh, Barbara Nadelyakova.

There she is. She plays Natalia.

And Yana Kajarabkova, who plays, uh, Svetlana, the blonde.

Good job on her name.

Yeah, I know. It took a while to get that one.

Uh, this is a room. These are these old 16th century rooms in the monastery.

And, uh, now the spa was actually a brewery.

Where the monks used to brew their beer.

There's my other cameo.

There's Gabe's cameo on the left.

And he's rubbing the feet of Veronica, our PA.

That's right.

Um.

This is where the hostile, this is where the hostile experiences start that I never had.

I would say at this point.

Yeah. It was never like that for you?

Never like this.

No. But that's okay.

Actually, you know, in Turkey, I've had experiences similar to this.

Where you go into a hammam, the bathhouses, and it's men and women.

Most of them are separated between men and women.

They're segregated.

But some of them, they're mixed sexes and you can go in and the women are topless.

Really?

I think that experience is similar to this.

So, I thought you did capture that kind of, that relaxed nature of Eastern Europe here.

Yeah.

Sort of that, well, that's the idea that we talked about sort of casual European nudity.

How, like, Athor is completely at home.

He has this connection with them.

He speaks Russian.

He's really the icebreaker.

And you can clearly see how kind of uncomfortable the Americans are.

And they're still trying to be cool.

Hopefully they'll get a hammam if they play their cards right.

Am I talking?

I'm Josh.

A little call back to Athor's ass coming up.

Yes.

And originally we had him walking in showing his ass, but we kind of saved it for this

little moment here.

And I think this is one of Athor's best scenes.

I think he really kind of came alive.

And it may have been because there were naked girls on set.

We shot this towards the end of the shoot.

You know, this is something that you can't really do the first day.

And I think this was like week seven of our seven week shoot that we shot this.

And this is a great line, I think, Chris, that you came up with for Derek.

Krog's cool.

Kafka.

Yeah.

Just that awkward trying to relate and just swinging and missing.

I'm familiar with that.

Like you see Derek's face there.

Like he's almost trying to follow along the song.

Like, yeah, do I know this one?

And I think that Barbara is really terrific here.

Like you just feel like she's the sweetest thing on earth.

She's so nice.

And this is really how these girls look.

They have very little makeup on.

And later when they're all fucked up and on drugs and, you know, who knows what's going on.

They took a lot of makeup to get them that way.

And here we see Kana and Yuki at the disco.

And this music is, I believe this is Tubla Tonka.

This was like, the music we're playing now is like a huge Czech song from 1982.

And Aethor takes the ecstasy and he's very happy.

Well, Tomas the sound guy helped you find a lot of that.

Yeah, Tomas Belaradsky, our sound guy, really kind of, I said, you know, I really, I love the idea that Amsterdam is modern and high-tech.

But when they go to Slovakia, all they listen to is, you know, Czechoslovakian pop music from 1982.

Like really, really old stuff.

He's like, I'll dig up some classics.

Well, communist era Czech pop is, I mean, is pretty good.

It really is.

You know, let's face it.

Yeah, I love it.

Yeah, I love it.

And that's the thing is, you know, we first started listening to it almost ironically, but then we really, really, really got into it.

That's all I listen to.

It's all I listen to now.

It's on my running mix.

Yeah.

And I think Derek's really funny here.

He's trying to talk about high school and stuff like, almost like letting her know that he's over it with his girlfriend.

Sneaper Patrol shirt.

Yes, the Sneaper Patrol.

Now actually, the word Sneaper in Iceland is spelled like the American word Sniper, but I felt that it said Sniper Patrol.

By the way, this is a huge scandal in Iceland right now.

The misspelling.

The misspelling of Sneaper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that glitter city shirt she's wearing.

It's one of my favorite outfits for Natalya.

And, you know, Derek's trying to be cool, but he doesn't like to smoke.

And he's probably having an asthma attack, but wants to play it off.

So this club, this was in The Guru.

That was the name of this club where we shot.

And, you know, the idea is that Amsterdam is all lit by lasers and this is all lit by candles.

Bakunas poster.

Yes.

Now this is back in Chesky Kremlov, you know, the interiors in Prague.

And if you notice down on the wall, you will start to see the Bakunas poster and Bakunas, you know, our production accountant, we said that he had a band, Bakunas and the Essential Elements.

And, uh, because I had to be insured as an essential element.

And that actually says in Slovakia in Bakunas reunion show, tickets still available.

And here we meet the bubblegum gang.

Adorable.

These kids are hilarious.

I mean, we probably filmed this at midnight, you know, I don't know what kind of labor laws we were breaking.

Um, but, uh, they don't really have them so much over there in the Czech Republic the way they do here.

You can kind of see the Bakunas poster between them, sort of by their legs.

And, uh, here's Jan saving Derek.

And then we go back inside and we're back at the Guru Club.

Those kids were funny, man.

And this, this line here that Jay kind of throw in, where he calls him faggot right there, that gets the biggest laugh out of anything in the movie.

And that was just Jay throwing that in.

Uh, I think it's a really nice scene between these two guys.

This sort of awkward moment where, and I think that this is sort of where the audience is like, what the fuck is going on here with these two?

And you start to get a bit of an insight into Jan, and, which makes the later scene with the torture all the more horrifying.

Choosing to have a family was the right choice for me.

And the tattoo.

I start to see the bloodhound tattoo.

He wants blood.

And that was Scotty Spiegel's idea, coming up with a tattoo, like, where is yours? You got to get it to me in the club.

And I thought it was cool.

But Jan's got those creepy, piercing eyes.

Excuse me.

It's my turn now.

Jan was frightening.

Both Jan and the German surgeon were just frightening in their auditions.

Yeah.

Really scary.

And usually it's tough in an audition to be that effective, but both of those guys were.

They did a great job.

And I thought that Franco did a really nice job with the sets here, you know, giving it that communal feel.

But still making it feel like it's old.

And this is the last we see of Oli.

Once he disappears, that's it.

And we actually shot a scene in the spa with Oli and Vala.

But in the editing, it just was much creepier that he disappeared and you kind of didn't know where he went.

It felt like, you know, there's no exit for him.

He's just like, you're so certain he's going to come back.

Jay's underwear is ridiculous in that last shot.

Can we just talk about that?

His Euro underwear?

Yeah.

Was that his choice or was that wardrobe?

That was wardrobe.

I was like, what are you doing in that underwear?

He goes, I don't know.

Wardrobe.

I'm like, this looks ridiculous.

And then we wind up using it in the movie.

Now this is, anytime you shoot a sex scene, this is where a director, this is a tough day for a director.

And you really earned your money.

Not that we paid you for this movie.

But why don't you talk a little bit about the stress of this day?

This is the most, probably the most difficult day shooting because the girls had me in the trailer.

And I don't mean it like that.

It was Yana and Barbara and other Yana who played Vala.

And all three of them were crying.

They were just really, and they had basically, we all discussed beforehand,

everything that was going to happen.

But they had worked themselves up into such a frenzy.

And Yana's like, and Yana's like just talking.

She's so upset she can't even talk English.

She's talking in Czech to Barbara.

I'm like, what's the matter?

She's like, Yana doesn't want to show her pussy.

And I'm like, why?

And they're like, because Yana has frog in her pussy.

And she's embarrassed it'll get on screen.

So like, that was like two days before.

So then the next scene, like, I see them all crying.

I'm like, girls, what's the matter?

They're like, we don't want to show frog.

But they were serious at that point.

But I couldn't laugh because I saw how upset they were.

And I was like, we're not going to show the frog.

I'm not going to show any of the frogs that are in any of your pussies.

But I couldn't laugh like I couldn't say a joke, you know.

And you have to, you know, calm them down and make them feel comfortable.

And honestly, after the first take, they were fine.

They realized the crew didn't care.

The crew just wanted to rap.

And that song we used in there, that is a sneaker pimp song called How Do.

It's a remix of a song called Willow's Song from the movie The Wicker Man, which is one of my favorite films from 1973.

And that's on their album Becoming X and I always loved it.

And this scene, I thought Chris had a really nice touch with Jay leaning over going mission accomplished.

And somehow that empty bed, once you know Oli's gone and you don't know what happened, that shot just became so much creepier.

Once we took the spa scene out of the editing, because we shot a scene where Oli's getting taken away in a van.

Here we go.

All right, let's talk about Jedi, guys.

All right.

Chris, would you like to do the honors?

Well, you're in love with him.

Why don't you talk about him?

All right.

Well, I was out with this gentleman, Milda Havlos.

He was our production assistant, one of our production assistants.

Not the handsome one.

No, he's the desk clerk.

That's him right there.

He's the desk clerk.

And he said to me while we're out at a bar, he's like, "I am Jedi."

No, it was like six in the morning and there was still a line to get into one of these bars.

And he was like, "No, don't worry, I'll get you guys in."

That's right.

He said, "I'm a Jedi."

No, he said, "I'm Jedi Academy."

No, first he said, "I'm Jedi."

Okay.

And then he started explaining that he's in the Jedi Academy and that the Jedi Academy

was a group of him and his friends and they were friends with everyone in Prague and they

can get in anywhere because they're the Jedi Academy and they're just a group of guys that

go out drinking.

237, of course, the shining reference on the keys there.

There you go.

And anyway, so Milda, you know, wanted to make Mike Fleiss the president of the Jedi Academy

and he started out being like, we were kind of laughing at him.

By the end, he kind of saves the day and this actor dropped out here and he did that part

and he was fantastic.

Yeah, he was amazing.

And the thing that was funny was I went in the office and I'm like, who's writing Jedi

everywhere?

Like it was written on the inside of his masking tape.

It was on the tape on the back of a chair.

It was taped.

It was a piece of masking tape on the desk in marker.

It said Jedi on it.

And I was like, what the fuck is this?

And they're like, oh, no, it's Jedi.

You've got to call him Jedi.

And I guess like the concept of, you know, kind of Star Wars nerds hasn't really hit over

in the Czech Republic yet.

And he's like, we're the Jedi Academy.

That's our crew.

You got to.

And then this actor dropped out at the last minute.

It was one of you guys.

And it was you, Gabe.

Or Gabe's like, what about Jedi?

And I was like, oh, my God, it'd be great.

And I was like, Briggs, what do you think?

And you're like, Jedi.

And I was like, Milda.

And this is my thing.

Like I put so many crew members in the movie.

I called them over and they're like, and they knew it was coming.

I was like, how'd you like to be a big Hollywood movie star?

I'll make you a star, kid.

And he just sort of rolls his eyes.

And he's like, I don't know if that's a good idea.

And so we're like, no, dude, you can do it.

Just be yourself.

But it came from Gabe asking about like DV tapes.

Like he was our production assistant.

And you'd yell at him about stuff.

But Milda, what's going on?

Milda was supposed to be getting me.

I was shooting all the behind the scenes stuff.

And Milda was supposed to be getting me microphones and tapes.

And he'd bring me a microphone and it would be broken.

And I'd ask him to go back and get me another one.

And he'd bring me back the same microphone.

And I'd be yelling at him.

I'd be like, Milda, you know, you can't bring me back the same mic.

He'd be like, relax, man.

It's OK.

Don't worry about it.

And then Chris went on to throw in the great line for Milda.

Relax, man.

You're on vacation.

Yeah.

Chill out, man.

This walk and talk, you notice their hair gets considerably shorter.

That's because it was the first day of shooting.

And there's some bad hair continuity in the movie.

Yes.

Yeah.

Here's a reprise of the bubblegum gang jumping out to get the bubblegum.

These kids, if I remember correctly, they didn't speak any English, yet they had an affinity for...

Yeah, for Ali G, which is really weird.

You know, we got these kids, not off the street, but they were just like local neighborhood kids and who had never acted before.

And we auditioned them and, you know, we just saw who could listen and who could do stunts.

And I was sitting and I was talking with them and I made some Ali G reference.

I was like, chicken.

And all the kids suddenly who spoke no English went, chicken.

And then I was like, booyakasha.

And they were like, booyakasha.

And I was like, punani.

And they said, punani.

These kids had watched Ali G.

And they didn't understand the words, but they knew the phrases.

So I suddenly had this little army of mini Ali Gs.

That is David Boxa, our art director.

Lord Boxa, as we call him.

And he's got this great kind of Marty Feldman quality about him where he's very, very funny.

But he can do like great deadpan comedy.

And he'd never been on camera before.

And I was like, you have to be the guard.

And we did do a shot that we'll put in a deleted scene where after they leave, he's reading a book.

And the book is hypnoza.

Like he's practicing hypnotizing people.

But I was the only one who got it.

So we cut it.

And yeah, this is all shot in the Museum of Torture in Chesky Krumlov.

But this was our second day of shooting.

And it was really, really tight in there.

But there's some really great sound design.

Like when they walk in, these are the actual sounds that are played in this museum.

And it's like the whole idea of torture is entertainment, that it's just an amusement.

And there's Oli.

And then this guy.

I remember this guy auditioning.

And he was kind of our backup for Alex.

I thought he did a really good job.

He's a really terrific actor, this guy.

And he had this crazy afro that he cut for the movie.

But really, wasn't it?

It really was his winning smile that got him this part, wasn't it?

Yeah.

And he was reluctant to show that winning smile until he kind of like sort of let it go

and just gave a really, really nice scary grin.

And even though the focus was a hair soft on it, I was like, you know what?

It's still creepy enough.

I got to keep it.

And this is another nice exterior B camera shot shot by Martine and Roman.

And this is one of the shots where I was starting to use Steadicam a little bit.

And I didn't use Steadicam at all on Cabin Fever and I really kind of fell in love with it here.

And yeah, the cell phone insert, which was then Compton later.

It's the head.

The head.

Terrific, terrific head done by Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero.

Did such an amazing job with the effects.

And there's the body in the background of Ole.

And this guy, you know, the idea is that we're not really supposed to know who it is,

but it's probably the Dutch businessman acting out his fantasies.

So I got a double for Jan Vlasak.

And this guy was like, I lived in Canada and I'm an actor.

And was really kind of actor-y and being really diva-ish.

And I was like, dude, you're cutting off her fucking toes with a bolt cutter.

This was the mental hospital.

We should talk about Keiko.

Yeah, this is the hospital.

Bonitian is really like that.

Keiko, who played Yuki, had never acted before.

And there's a shop in Prague called Japashop.

It's like a Japanese, it sells Japanese things.

And Milan, Hanemar DP, his wife is friends with her.

And Milan, actually she'd been in a commercial that Milan shot.

That was the only thing she had done.

And I thought she really did a terrific job.

And so here we are in the hostel.

And if you notice, like there's less people.

It's a little darker.

At first when they walk in, there's lots of life and activity.

But in the sound, in the sound design, in the score,

it's just everything starts to feel like it's quiet.

And like things are dying away.

And it starts to feel a little colder and a little creepier.

And that's Jennifer Lim.

Let's talk about Jennifer who did Kano.

Remember all the trouble we were having casting Kano?

Well, you know, we were trying to put the money on the screen.

And, you know, when you start talking about flying in actors from Japan,

you know, it's expensive.

And we look for local Japanese actresses,

which, you know, in Prague obviously are going to be, you know, few and far between.

And we actually turned to London, Phillip Whaley, our co-producer,

who's from London.

He, you know, he did a great job getting some, you know, audition tapes.

And we found Jennifer.

And I think actually, Gabe, you were the one that kind of, you know,

really noticed something about her and brought her to Eli's attention.

Yeah.

She has amazing eyes.

Yeah.

And if you're going to blowtorch out and snip out someone's eyes,

she's the one.

And her audition tape was just incredible.

Yeah.

She's just a fantastic actress.

And she's so sweet.

And she really is beautiful and demure

and like very dignified and speaks the Queen's English

and like very classically trained British actress.

And she loves horror movies and loves Miike films.

And God bless her.

It was such a pleasure.

She's one of those girls that was just so happy to be there.

And she'd have to go through three or four hours of makeup.

I mean, you were there the first time she got that burn makeup on.

That's right.

She kept her eyes closed the whole time she was getting her makeup on just because she wanted to give herself that shocking reaction.

And it was pretty powerful when she first opened up her eyes and saw herself in the burn makeup.

Yeah.

Well, what's fun is when you are...

This took 17 takes, by the way, for Mildred to clip that.

For robot arm.

Robot arm.

Robot arm.

It's always fun when, you know, for someone like Jennifer, who's a horror fan, to like have prosthetics and stuff applied by KNB effects, like the best in the business.

I mean, it's really such a thrill.

So it's always nice when you're doing that to somebody who actually appreciates what's just done to them.

I appreciate the music in this scene.

This music is our favorite song.

It's "Tretti Galaxy."

It's actually a cover of an Italian song, but this is sung by Michal David.

And Michal David is a huge star in the Czech Republic.

I think, you know, if there's 10 million people in the Czech Republic, something like 8 million homes have his CDs.

And there's this weird shot of Oli.

Well, he was approved by the government.

He was approved by the government, yeah.

But he's not just a huge star in the Czech Republic.

He's also quite famous in Slovakia.

And he's a terrific composer.

He actually does musical scores now.

And he was really cool to let us use that song because that was the song that we all wind up listening to over and over.

I love the way Barbara says goodbye.

And you notice it's lit by candles.

And that's that sort of last look.

And I like Jay does the little pussy sign here.

I think it's really funny.

On any given day, you could walk on set and hear someone whistling this song.

Yeah.

People had it on their phones.

And there's Yana and Jay.

Or Apple Box.

Apple Box.

As we can.

Because Yana is 7 feet tall.

So we had to have Jay on like a ladder.

Because not that Jay is a short guy, but Yana is just like a monster.

Derek with his hair much longer than in 15 minutes earlier.

Than he was this afternoon.

But that's all right.

And I love that he, I thought that his makeup of him looking really sick.

And there's this really weird kind of Roman Polanski looking dude talking to Vala there.

Polanski who we did see in Prague?

Actually, yeah, we talk about that on the comedy we saw.

We ran into Polanski.

And there's Yana.

And Yana's a model.

And she'd never acted before.

And I thought she really did a really nice job.

She's such a very, such a sweet girl.

And has that sweet, friendly quality.

You just feel like they're harmless.

And, you know, they're just so unbelievably evil.

Didn't she win like Miss Springtime, Czech Republic or something like that?

She won some beauty pageant.

I don't know.

But her boyfriend was such a doofus.

Yeah, he was.

I remember she showed up at the wrap party with him.

And we were like, you gotta be kidding me.

This guy just sucks.

And even, like, George Falsey came up to me.

He's like, yeah, I gotta say, Yana's boyfriend just sucks.

Like, everyone was like, it wasn't like I noticed it.

It was like every member of the crew was so unimpressed with it.

She had, like, some, like, 34-year-old doofus.

I was like, what?

I think he figured she was slipping away, getting in the movies.

Yeah, exactly.

No, I think this is one of the best scenes with the girls.

I mean, they're, you know, obviously they're speaking in Czech.

But, like, this look where they just give him.

He just feels so iced out.

And this is where the girls really start to turn cold.

You know, it starts with goodbye.

But in this scene, I think it's a really nice transition

between this and the pub where the girls, like, you know,

they're being nice to him, but they're not talking to him.

He knows they're talking about him.

And, of course, we do the recall for German.

And then there's, you know, our cab driver with this guard gives him the look.

Both of the girls had a really nice subtle look between each other here.

They had a good rapport with each other anyway.

They seemed to be very good friends off camera.

Yeah.

So it worked out on camera.

Yeah.

Now, did Jay's character Paxton, did he, was he just a guy who took high school German,

or did, because a lot of people have told me that his dad was actually in the military,

and so he was actually raised on an army brat in German military bases.

I figured he took it at Columbia.

Or, like, went to Ivy League school.

Smart guy.

Yeah, he's a smart guy.

And this is at the Guru.

You know, originally I had him getting locked in a stairwell,

but we kind of set up, you know, this storage room that he gets locked into.

And if you notice, like, in Amsterdam, all the extras are young and, like,

it's kind of young and hot in here.

It's like in Slovakia, it's more, like, older and gray and smoky and darker.

And that's what this closet looked like in this room.

I mean, we didn't make that crazy paint.

We didn't paint that or anything.

We just put lots of kegs and different cases and things.

And this moment here where it fades out on Jay and you sort of wake up on the POV,

that was not in the script.

Originally he faded out and there were these weird flashes

where you saw these strange things and then faded up on the POV.

But I thought it really -- it was Quentin's idea just to fade out on Jay

and then fade up and it's Derek's POV.

And in the sound, what Brian Best and I did in the sound design

is we used both of their breathing in this.

We used Jay's breathing and Derek's breathing.

And I should talk about the sound mix.

I mean, Bob Beamer, who's our sound mixer, did such an amazing job.

He's such a cool guy.

And he'd won the Oscar for Ray and for Gladiator.

He's won three Oscars for sound mixing.

And Tatum Coat was our dialogue mixer.

And Bob really did a great job of sort of changing the perspective of the room

and getting all, like, you know, the movement and, you know, the way echoes

and the way he kind of boomed out the base of these footsteps.

And the door sounds so heavy.

And the door sounds so heavy.

You know, this was shot on a stage and you really, really feel like you're in this factory.

And Brian Best just -- I had such a great experience with him on Cabin Fever.

We worked together really making these drones.

You know, he came up with so many different cool factory ambiences and drones.

You know, I wanted to feel like the rooms where Jay are tortured and Paxton are tortured --

you know, where it's Jay and Derek are tortured are different rooms,

but that they -- but it feels like it's in the same space.

Franco did a great job.

I mean, the walls all look fantastic.

Amazing.

The floor really was cement.

And, you know, Derek did end up smashing the chair down on his toe and he really messed himself up.

But the factory just looks unbelievable.

And it's just so interesting that this is literally a couple of feet away from the interior of the brothel.

Yeah, and it's weird.

We did the thing where we hung those three towels on the right-hand side in the brothel and we kind of hung the aprons here in the same way.

But, yeah, Derek was just terrifying.

You can talk about Brian's sound right here.

Yeah.

Brian Best did such a great job with his drill sounds.

And, you know, it was really great.

We had -- I should just say that he had a terrific team.

I mean, you know, Kami Esgar, Sean McCormick, Tim Tukrella.

Everyone who worked on the sound really, really got into it.

Like, I remember Sean's like, "Oh, man, I got this old chainsaw.

I got the perfect chainsaw noise."

And Brian's like, "Yeah, we tried out four different drills and we got this really cool drill."

And I just knew that, like, that shot -- that was, you know, Karel, our prop master, brought in all these awesome tools.

You know, he was -- he's the best prop master in Prague.

He's amazing.

And you really need a great props guy for a movie like this.

He got all these old tools and it was just terrifying.

But I love, like, the texture in the walls, just the way this whole thing looks.

And really, you know, it all came together.

I mean, Kevin Wassner did an amazing job on the makeup.

You know, Kevin works with K&B effects with Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger.

And they just did such a great job.

The costume was interesting here.

You had a lot of problems with the apron.

Yeah, the costume.

You know, this woman, Yitka, was our costume designer.

She really -- or Franco was our costume designer.

And Yitka came in and she was our wardrobe supervisor.

And she really -- you know, we were having trouble with the design of the costume.

And then Yitka showed up with this apron and it was just terrifying.

And when your wardrobe, you know, supervisor looks scary in a costume, you think, okay, this is really going to work.

The only problem was in the script, the moment where Josh looks in the mirror, she sees -- he sees that the Dutch businessman has an erection.

And that was one -- that was, like, my favorite thing in the script was, like, right before he kills Josh, he's just choking him and choking him.

And Josh, like, realizes that this guy is getting off on this sexually.

And, um, the only thing that we lost with this costume was that you couldn't kind of do the boner shot.

And Jan Vlasak actually wanted to do it.

Everyone was like, "Oh, man, we can't do it."

But the kind of outfit, the leather apron, like, the tools -- I didn't want it to look like a surgeon.

I didn't want it to look like a hospital.

I mean, the outfit was loud and squeaky and that sound of squeaking leather makes me really uncomfortable.

And it's too bad it's one of the things we lost.

But I thought what we gained just from the imagery certainly outweighed it.

Come some great K&B, Kill Bill leftovers here.

I'm always struck when I -- watching Derek do this, just how large his mouth gets there.

I mean, he's really pushing it.

Yeah, Derek -- Derek, you know, the chair really came down on his toe.

And he was -- I was like, "If you want this to be your last take, then make it your last take."

I think that was my only direction to him.

And then he walks away.

And here -- yeah, these are the legs from Kill Bill, which is very -- it's just so great about K&B.

They worked on Kill Bill.

They got body parts from Land of the Dead, the legs from Kill Bill.

It was really cool.

And -- oh, and that's just -- even when we were shooting it, it looked -- those legs looked so real up close.

And that's what you need with great makeup effects artists.

It has to look that real right there.

And you can see, like, the dust when Derek hits the ground there.

And when he dragged him, Derek really scraped his feet and really pulled his hair.

It was really --

Yeah, Jan really did yank him by the hair pretty hard there.

Yeah.

But Derek's also a huge pussy, so, you know --

I'm just kidding.

Derek was awesome.

But for those of you who are worried, Derek and Jan are still friends and correspond regularly.

Yeah, no, they all hung out. They had a drink at the wrap party.

And, you know, this guy came in -- I remember this guy read for Alex.

Mm-hmm.

And he was really, really funny, but he was just kind of insane.

I mean, insane in that, like, it was just funny to us.

But he's like, "I love Iceland."

And Bakunas?

Yes, now you can clearly see the Bakunas and the Essential Elements poster there on the wall.

And this is just a building in -- there's no club inside there.

That's just a building in -- in Chesky Kremlov that I think is for sale.

And this scene, I think, Milda really came to life.

Like, the guy really isn't -- I think he's a natural.

I think he photographs great.

There are certain people you just -- the camera just loved them.

And they just look like they belong in the frame.

And I thought that Milda -- like, this is what he was meant to do.

He's a Jedi. Come on.

But look at him. He's so real.

And you really feel like this guy's probably --

They probably don't even tell him what's going on.

Just keep him clueless, you know?

If it's a mistake.

If it's a mistake.

And Jay was really great.

Jay and Derek really rehearsed with him so that he felt comfortable.

But that was that line you did.

"Shut up, man. You're on a vacation."

And now there's nobody there, just one cleaning woman.

I forget now.

Did Milda have a lisp in check?

Yes, he does have a lisp in check.

And he's very self-conscious of it.

And I thought it was pretty brave of him to still do the movie,

knowing that, you know, people would hear his lisp.

Well, let's not give him a DVD.

And here, Chris, this was your callback.

Great idea you had.

I think in the original script, I mean, it's Jay's character coming back to the hostel

and just kind of comes into an empty room.

And I thought that, you know, as things are getting more insidious

and there's this creeping realization that something's going on.

I thought it might be creepy if, you know, there were a couple other girls

essentially doing the identical thing as Yana and Barbara's characters

when they first arrived at the hostel.

And it seemed to have, and you did it, and it seemed to resonate.

What was really interesting for me was actually having a chance to share an office with Chris

during this production because a lot of people, you go to a movie set and you see producers sitting around

and it looks like they're doing nothing.

And sharing an office with Chris, you know, I got to hear him always working on the script.

No matter what we were shooting, he was trying to figure out how can we make it better,

how can we make it better.

And little things like that callback and, you know, like little lines here and there.

You're so far from home, yeah.

And I mean, it was really amazing to see what like a creative producer like Chris does on a day-to-day basis on set.

And he's always working hard.

So when it looks like the producer's just sitting there watching and enjoying the set, they're really working.

Yeah.

And that was one of the great things.

I mean, Chris and I, we didn't really know each other before this.

We just met through Fleiss.

And, you know, what I loved was that Chris, you know, Chris had opportunities to have his own television show to star on.

I mean, Chris, you might recognize him from Superstar USA and some other great things.

You know, we'd done Best Week Ever and stuff before, but Chris was offered his own show.

I think it was on Comedy Central or VH1.

And he turned it down to go to Prague to do Hostel, which I was really impressed that it meant that much to you to see this idea through.

And that's why it was so great.

I mean, Chris was the producer who was there with me on set.

It was really terrific.

Mike was there in the beginning, but every day from pre-production to production, the reshoot, all of it.

Chris was right there.

And it was so terrific to have you just thinking of other ideas.

Like this scene here where I remember we were shooting it.

And this guy, Miroslav.

He's a great actor.

He's an amazing actor.

He starred in a movie with Penelope Cruz, a Spanish film, and he won a Goya Award for Best Actor.

Which is like, that's the Spanish Oscar.

Yeah.

And I think that it had never been won by a foreigner.

He's the first person ever to win it.

And it's like he came in for a day and just did this role.

And it's just, he's so sympathetic and so nice.

And, you know, Chris came up with this line of like, you know, where are you from?

And you're so far from home.

Like, it's such a real moment.

And just, like, it completely resonated the whole theme of the movie.

I'm so far from home.

And those are the kinds of things.

I mean, there's a value just, when you're, to be on the set, that's why you're there.

Because it's not something you can, it's just something that you kind of feel in the moment.

And to, you know, have Eli so open to, you know, collaboration and suggestions.

It's just boom.

You know, you just, you think of it, you talk, you huddle and you talk about it for a minute.

And then you have the actor try it.

And then, you know, in the edit bay, sometimes that stuff sticks and ends up being, you know, you know.

And the trailer, the commercials, the TV spots start out with that, which I think is so great.

And he's such a good actor that when you have, like, guys like him and Jay Hernandez.

And we should talk about Jay.

I mean, Jay is such an amazing actor.

And I was so, I felt so lucky that he wanted to be part of the movie.

And it's, he's shooting the Oliver Stone 9/11 movie right now.

So, unfortunately, he's unavailable for the commentary.

But he's really just exactly the kind of actor you want on set.

Just throws himself into it and just makes himself vulnerable and will do anything, anything to make, to make it great.

He's just a great, great, great guy.

So, this pub, um, was a pub that our DP Milan Khadima and sound guy Tomasz Bilaratsky used to hang out at when they were in high school.

And it really looks like this.

This is not, this is not art directing.

They said it has not changed one bit since they were in high school.

Every single poster, everything's exactly the same.

It's a whole communist pub.

And look at Yana's arm there on the left.

She's got track marks, you know, like Svetlana, like, was someone beating her?

And I thought that Yana, uh, you know, she's a model.

She hadn't really acted before.

Barbara plays Natalia as a trained actor and tremendous experience.

But Yana's a model.

I thought she was really, really good in this scene.

She shows her superpower here.

Yeah.

Her lips, you know, she can almost look like she's out of sync, but that's what she's like in real life.

That's kind of her superpower.

She's got those, we called her Zoolander because of her lips.

But she really is in sync here.

Yeah.

But she, I thought the girls really did an incredible job, you know, and it took a lot of makeup to get them to look like this.

You know, they don't look like that naturally.

And we, and I thought it was really cool to find girls that are that beautiful that were willing to make themselves look that disgusting.

You know what I really love about this scene actually is the, the extras.

I mean, you know, you can't find actors and if you can find real like American actors and you dress them up, it looks like you've dressed up actors.

The people that you found in Prague to do everything from like the smaller parts, like the coffee house manager and the cab driver to the extras in this pub, it really makes everything feel genuine.

Well, you know, it's going to sound really pretentious to say this, but I'm, I'm very obsessive about extras in the movie.

And, and you have to think of it that you're, you're painting a frame and that it's like a blank canvas and you're filling it with all these little things.

And if you pay attention to every little detail when it comes together, it gives you this bigger picture.

But I'm very specific about, you know, it's like here, the colors are darker and more muted and the people are older and it's grays.

Like it's, we're just seeing less and less bright colors.

Do you know, even the color that Jay is wearing, it's all these darker things that all sort of plays towards this mood and atmosphere.

It's where that line always gets a laugh.

I want to see some art.

This was our audition scene.

Do you remember this, Chris?

I, I, I do.

When we cast actors.

I remember seeing 300 guys read that.

Yeah.

And this was, this was, you know, I watch it now and it's probably, these are like my favorite scenes in the film.

I just thought that they were so good.

And I love the way she says that.

She just gives him this look like, you fucker.

You don't even know what's coming.

And I thought that Barbara did a really great job here of just being ice cold.

You know, if you think of her in the spa when, you know, the way we shot it, it's so warm.

The way the wood is and her skin tone.

And here it's like white and pale and it's just bleak.

That means, can I have more gum in Slovakia?

And she's wearing that weird ass Russian coat.

Um, and this scene went on a little bit longer and I wound up cutting it.

And it's actually one of those scenes I would, I think I over cut.

I wish it had played out a little bit longer.

But I just like, you know, Jay Hernandez knows he's heading towards something horrible,

but he's just has to prove them wrong.

This guy, we called the Christopher Walken extra.

He had this really, really weird, creepy quality.

Great teeth.

He had awesome teeth.

And then there's the, the smokestack, which we've seen right from the beginning.

Actually all your extras in this one.

Yeah.

This is one of my favorite shots.

This is a charming location.

Now what's the, uh, how many people have died in this building?

I love a lot.

And it was almost us while we were shooting.

This is an old sugar factory that's closed down now.

And I went and saw it on my scout a year ago.

And I came back and I was like, there was that and the village were the reasons.

I was like, we have to shoot here.

I mean, I just, you know, it's like you write the script and then you show up and this couldn't

be more perfect.

It's like it was built from your imagination.

And there are a lot of buildings like that in the Czech Republic.

Things are just closed down.

There's nothing there.

And here are, you know, the thugs and the drivers and limos.

And we're going to be soon seeing a camera from Takashi Miike.

Now Takashi Miike is one of my favorite directors.

And he directed this terrific film Audition and Ichi the Killer.

And here he comes.

And we were talking about how do we get Jay Hernandez to go into this creepy place if

it's really that scary looking.

I thought of just some businessman who's so completely out of place, walks out and then

gets into a limo and says, yeah, just watch out.

You can spend all your money in there.

Then Jay would think, well, that guy was in there.

I mean, maybe there is some art exhibit.

Like he's just really going in, not because he believes her, but he just has to prove her

wrong and has to know what's going on.

And Miike flew all the way from Japan to do that one line.

He flew nine hours from Japan.

And the guy makes six movies a year.

So he's not like a guy who has a lot of free time.

It was really, really cool for him.

Forever, forever in debt to Miike for doing that.

I really thought it just gave such a nice touch.

And it was really fun in Toronto when we showed at the Toronto Film Festival,

the first screening when Miike came on.

The whole place erupted into applause because they know him really well there.

Inside the sugar factory.

Yeah.

And if you listen to the music the guy's listening to is Ocicione, Ociscucione,

which is the song that Athor sings that Natalia knows in the spa.

And now maybe we can see where she learned it.

This guy, Philippe, was terrific.

I credit him as mutton chop because those great mutton chops.

And this, gotta remember, to get this shot, it was the upstairs room of this factory.

And I was like, can we put a camera up there?

And we just walked and I was like, there's just a wall there.

I was like, how do we get in the other side?

And Hans, our location manager, just kicked the wall down.

He's like, all right, let's go.

And that was the great thing about shooting in Prague was you can go to a building and just kick a wall down and put the camera there.

This was a dangerous place to walk around, though.

There were holes in the floor and just a lot of places to just fall to your death.

Yeah.

But that's the beauty, like you said, of shooting in Prague.

They don't worry about that stuff.

They just say, watch out for the hole.

They're not pussies.

Yeah, they're like, be careful.

You know what I mean?

They're not reckless.

But in America, you'd have to have a team of safety inspectors.

They test the air.

They test this.

And you'd never get these shots.

To make this place safe enough to shoot in America, you'd never be able to shoot there.

I mean, whatever.

Everyone was fine.

We all lived.

And we got some good shots.

Who cares, right?

Yeah.

And they're turning that building into condos, so.

Now, here we are down in the basement at Bonitsa.

Now, Bonitsa is a mental hospital where 1,100 people still live.

But this wing has been closed down for about 50 years.

And it was built in 1910.

And the first time I went down there, it was so unbelievably creepy.

Now, his POV that he sees, that's shot on a stage.

But this is all at this location.

So we just basically shot this on the stage where we shot Josh's torture scene.

We put him in this makeup.

And we got Kevin Wassner, Howard Berger.

I mean, look at that.

Like his skin flaps on his arm.

It's so creepy.

And here's the moment where the businessman just looks up and sees Jay.

And they kind of have this strange moment where Jay's just so horrified and backs up.

And I think that this is where, you know, kind of at this point in the script, Jay's sort

of been a dick up to this point.

And people kind of like when he gets grabbed.

I know girls, because he's been so sexist in the first half of the movie.

You know, the girls laugh when she says that makes you my bitch.

And this is where, you know, he's been making fun of hookers in the beginning.

And now, basically, he's the hooker in the window.

She just pimped him out.

He is her bitch.

And I love how she fades into the darkness there.

That's one of those shots we had exactly in our head when you're writing it.

And it was so gratifying to be able to shoot it.

And this is the second unit stuff shot by Roman.

You know, we were shooting in another scene.

And, like, Roman just got all the inserts.

Like, that's Kuba's hand.

That's Kuba's feet.

Jay's getting dragged, you know, shooting.

Like, in all the...

He spent a whole day just doing different kind of POVs passing by.

You know, all the people covered in blood.

And there's Chris Briggs in the lab.

There's Chris Briggs' cameo.

Clamping the guy's nuts.

Yeah, that's Bill Schultz.

He's a writer for Stuff Magazine, freelance writer.

Doing a movie like this, it makes you ask yourself some interesting questions.

Like, if I was going to pay to kill somebody, like, what implement of torture would I use?

And I guess, for me, it would be a nut clamper.

That thing was heavy, though.

That thing was, like, 80 pounds just to clamp someone's nuts.

And, uh...

This works so effectively, the dark here.

Well, I think at this moment here, we can talk about Nate Barr's music.

I mean, Nathan Barr and I had such a great collaboration on Cabin Fever.

And, um...

You know, I've worked with Nate and Angela Badalamenti on Cabin Fever,

and I felt that, you know, I wanted to sort of work...

I wanted to give Nate something that was on his own,

that was where he would do the whole thing from start to finish.

And, uh, I really felt that he was the right guy for this.

And I was such a pleasure, because this is the first time he's really got a chance to record with an orchestral score.

And Sony really stepped up and gave us the additional money to go to Prague and shoot with a 75-piece orchestra.

And just give it that big feel.

And that scene where Paxton gets dragged and you have that huge horn section.

Um, or when they approach, uh, you know, the factory and it's that beautiful piece with the cellos.

Like, you really, really feel it.

You just kind of feel it in your guts.

And it's so important in making the movie tense and scary.

I think that this transition, uh, just illustrates, you know, how effective Nate's score is,

and Brian Best's sound design and that terrific mix with Bob Beamer.

So here we are in, uh, Paxton's "Torture."

And this was actually, it was the same set that just Franco moved the walls around and repositioned.

And, uh, we wanted it to, uh, Milan, Khadima, DP lit it differently.

He had a completely different lighting scheme for Josh's room and for Paxton's room.

So did you feel like you were in the same space, but that it was not the exact same room.

And this guy, Peter, who played the German surgeon,

he was so scary in his audition. You remember that?

Well, it was the first day I got to Prague and you guys had been there for about a month.

And I came in and you had me read with this guy.

And just sitting in an audition room reading with him, I got freaked out.

He really scared the crap out of me.

And I just, right from that first read, I don't think there was any question

that this guy had to be in the movie. He was so freaky.

But he kind of had this nervous quality.

You know, the idea is that he's supposed to be as scared of doing this.

It's like, who's more scared, this guy or Jay Hernandez?

You know, he should be scared like the guys aren't.

You know, you feel like in the way Josh had never been to a hooker before

and didn't quite know what to do, that's how this guy is.

You know, it's his first time doing this.

And now he's starting to enjoy that feeling of power.

It also seemed like it was his first time acting on camera.

He never did anything the same way twice.

No, and he got a little wild with the scissors.

So this we had to have the stunt guy do.

Do you remember this, Chris?

Yeah, just thinking that I remember Jay not probably loving it.

You know, not trusting the German guy with the scissors.

Yeah, but that actually helped Jay in his performance.

That was good.

And this is a nice moment here by Scotty Spiegel,

putting the guy saving the hair as a souvenir.

But, and this is, I mean, I think Jay is great to cry on camera like that.

That was actually a shot that we blew up and flipped and turned around to kind of add an additional crying shot.

It was a piece of this shot.

And, you know, I didn't want to keep repeating ourselves with the scalpels and same tools.

So I had to just find horrible things that could maim him but not kill him.

And that was one of the wonderful tools that Karel, our prop guy, brought.

I love Peter's eyes there.

It's so scary.

The masks in the background, where did you find all those?

That was Karel, our prop guy.

You know, he showed photos of different things we wanted hanging.

You know, I really wanted to fill the frame, everything.

You know, we always, you know, it's called, you know,

usually have like an on-set dresser.

I mean, the way, it's a different system over in Prague.

But those masks, I love just the different shapes and different torture masks.

Some of that stuff we had seen in old museums of torture.

And Karel, our props guy, just had connections to these places.

And he showed me photographs.

And every single prop that's hanging in these rooms, you know, we picked.

We went through and we said, I want this, this, this, this.

And then with our, you know, Michael Turner, like, you know, we're doing,

we're hanging that stuff up.

And, you know, you can see the chainsaw hanging in the background now.

You're not really paying attention to it, but there it is.

And, and, you know, this guy came in, Vlad, who puts the gag on him.

We called him the Terminator, because he just kind of spoke in one way.

Talk, speak.

And I see him around Prague.

He's actually a bouncer.

Very nice guy.

But I thought this worked out well.

And, you know, this was Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger had rigged this ball gag.

And I said before, it was not a conscious reference to Pulp Fiction.

We were just trying to find a way to gag him where we could rig tubing,

that the puke would come out.

And, you know, I do like the, uh, the way Peter's really subtle here.

And he's about to shoot him in the head and just finish it.

But, you know, he sees something better.

And this guy, Peter's a playwright.

He's a playwright.

He's a playwright.

So, I don't know.

He just had this really crazy intensity to him.

You guys picked actors for the torturers that had incredible eyes, both of them.

Yeah.

Well, Chris was there with me in all the casting sessions.

And it was really, really helpful, uh, having him there.

Because, you know, a lot of the times, if you see 50 different people, it gets confusing.

And you have the one person that's perfect.

But you also, then you start putting the actors in relationship to each other.

You know, you want to have the guy that tortured Paxton has to be very different from the guy that tortured Josh.

And they're both going to be wearing these outfits.

So, how do you distinguish that?

Uh, and that's actually, he's holding a rubber chainsaw there.

And this was an effect shot.

We comp this in.

We shoot, you know, Jay.

And then we shoot the saw.

And Bob Kurtzman and Dave Matherly at Precinct 13 comp them together.

So, the blade is never really right there in Jay's face.

He's never on camera with the saw.

I guess I shouldn't have given that away, Chris.

What do you think?

Uh, I was just going to ask if you could give away for people who want to make vomit at home,

uh, in a new way, what, how they do that.

Uh, I wasn't with Kevin Wassner.

He was cooking up the vomit.

I knew it was some sort of soupy concoction.

Did you know what it was, Gabe?

No.

I think he just took, like, pea soup and some other things.

I don't know.

Yeah, the old exorcist remedy of pea soup.

And here, you know, Jay's choking to death.

And, uh, here's how he gets out of it.

That's Howard Berger and Kevin Wassner and did such a great job with that finger cut.

And they sent us a test.

I remember seeing the test footage of that chainsaw.

And, uh, this is a hand that Kevin Wassner was operating, this mechanical hand that was articulated.

So it was really, really cool.

And at one point you were thinking of actually having his entire hand cut off.

Yeah, but we felt he'd bleed to death.

And this is a stunt guy.

And we just sort of made the decision that, uh, in the time that he put on the chainsaw he got dressed up in this kind of crazy costume.

But the reason we did that was because we had a stunt guy here.

And this stunt guy almost passed out at the end of the day.

We really just worked him to the death.

But I will say that Jay Hernandez did all of his own stunts.

He really was, uh, it was impressive.

That was a hard concrete floor and metal tables.

And he dives into all of that stuff.

He did not pussy out on anything.

No.

And that's what I love about Jay is he, you know, throws himself into it.

And this is, uh, remember how hard it was to rig that headshot?

That's, that's actually, we make up the bullet hole in his head and Bob Curtson digitally removed, um, a few frames so it looks like the shot comes on.

And Kevin Wassner had to rig the spray.

It was tough to figure out.

Well, if I remember correctly on that day, that shot had to work.

Well, initially what happened was, uh, they had one rigging that didn't work.

And then he took, Kevin took condoms, filled them up with blood and guts, and then they squibbed them.

They double squibbed them, and then they blew out the squibs from the back of his head.

This movie is Sex Fever.

That is the Cabin Fever porn parody, uh, directed by Chloe, and it was really cool.

Uh, Chloe gave us permission, and, uh, I think Larry Flint Publications owns it, and they let us use it.

Um, and here he kind of clicks the gun and throws it down.

I mean, the idea was that they didn't give you too many bullets.

My feeling was that he couldn't go around shooting everybody, 'cause, you know, that would cause a tension.

And, honestly, I just wanted to get that ram mask in there.

I saw that mask, and I just thought it was really, really creepy and weird.

And, um, I thought it would be a good way for him to sort of disguise his face walking around this place.

And I love the touch of him grabbing his fingers. That was Scotty Spiegel.

And this is Bonita. This is the basement of the mental hospital, and that's really what it looked like.

I think we may have added some of those lights. I don't think those lights were even there.

Yeah, when we did the, uh, Scout, I remember the first day that I went down there with you, uh, I went around to shoot some stuff from behind the scenes, and I got really scared down there, 'cause it's totally dark, and there's things left over from the old days.

Those old hooks and tables, all this stuff's original stuff that we, um, and here comes some thugs.

It's a creepy place, man.

Yeah. That's why we had a string quartet playing Vivaldi.

And here, this is kind of like the tool room. You know, we spent a long time hanging these things off the walls, so.

And he backs up in the cart, and, uh, this is where we meet the trolley of death, as Howard Berger called it.

Uh, and there's kind of Yuki's body and the remnants of some other people, and...

It was a mess shooting this. If it looks and feels like it's disgusting watching it, it was that disgusting shooting it.

And here we meet the butcher. And, uh, that's a real butcher's outfit that he's wearing.

Um, I didn't want... I didn't want to have a hospital feel for any of this stuff. I wanted to feel more industrial.

And, of course, the costume is there on the ground.

Um, and now, you know, in my house.

That's his hump.

Yeah, that is his hump. That is actually his hump.

And now we're kind of seeing everything, obviously, from Paxton's point of view.

And we get to get a little more flavor about what's going on.

These people are leading the torturer into a room where another victim's waiting.

And I thought Nate's score was beautiful here and the sound guys did it.

Brian Best and...

Kuba.

Bob Beamer. There's Kuba cleaning the room, of course.

Uh, our production assistant, Una Kuba.

The handsome one.

The handsome one.

And, uh, this elevator was a set that we built.

It's a really, really terrific set.

And, again, this is where having a production designer like Franco Carboni is so helpful.

He did cabin fever with me and really did a tremendous job of making elevators that looked and felt like it was still in the same location.

You know, this was, and, you know, Peter Conrad, our gaffer in Milan, had such a terrific system to give it that feeling like this, you want to feel like this elevator could, like, snap and fall down and like it was built in the '20s or something.

And, actually, at the, at the location where we shot, there was a real elevator like this.

It was just, you just couldn't film it.

You couldn't get a camera in there.

It was too tight.

This stage, actually, was a stage, uh, where Hitler had shot some of his propaganda movies, wasn't it?

Yeah, we found that out while we were shooting.

While my parents were there.

That was nice.

They appreciated that.

I mean, because we're Jewish, so.

It's like, oh, great.

Hitler shot here.

Wonderful, Eli.

Nice.

You both made horror films.

Uh, this is the kitchen.

I think this is the kitchen of the hospital.

These tables, the hooks, everything in this room, none of this stuff is props that we set up.

It was all there.

I think we maybe put a few axes on the wall, and that was it.

This was just the worst couple of days of shooting this stuff.

Because, uh, all of the, uh, meat that he's chopping up was pork parts and beef parts that Kevin Wassner picked up at a butcher shop.

And it got left there overnight, and it rotted.

It smelled so disgusting that when he cut through it with the saw, uh, people started dry heaving.

And I love the makeup that Kevin did on Josh's mouth.

Like, like, the surgery was so careful, he actually sewed up his mouth.

I love the way he just nonchalantly tosses those body parts.

I, I mean, I cannot emphasize how badly, and I can't emphasize enough how badly it smelled in that room.

It was just horrible.

Chris, what are your memories of this kitchen?

I remember being shocked to find out that that guy, that was his actual, that that wasn't a prosthetic.

That was his hump.

That that was his hump.

That that was his hump.

Yeah, Yosef.

And he only moves at this speed.

He made it very clear that he can't walk faster or slower.

And here's the finger drop.

Philip Whaley, picking up the fingers as the, uh.

Yeah, Philip Whaley.

And I like how he puts his mask on.

But that, that shot right there, the whole place, the smoke of burning flesh.

And then the Red Bull girls came in.

Let me tell you, when the Red Bull girls show up on set, everyone steps up their game.

All the, all the crew guys get so happy and then they drink Red Bull and you get like 50 shots in a day.

It's awesome.

And I think that that leg on the table we actually wound up using later in the furnace because it was such a good fake leg.

Well, half of it was a beef part.

Yeah, half of it was a beef part.

And this is in another part of the hospital.

Uh, this furnace room.

And this is what it looked like.

We didn't really, I think we put a flame bar in there because to get the furnace working was a big deal.

What's amazing is it looks so hot in there.

And when we went to scout, that room must have been about zero degrees.

Yeah, it was probably zero degrees Fahrenheit.

And, uh, it was just so cold on the set.

But, uh, you know, between the lighting and the set design and everything, it just looks so hot and disgusting.

And this is Jay Hernandez back on the stage, um, where Hitler shot his movies, going up in the elevator.

And you'll see a nice cameo by Roman, who shot the second unit shots and is in the movie about 16 different times.

He's such a sweet guy, Roman, but he looks like such a bruiser.

Um, it was just awesome having him on set.

We had such a fun time together.

Cool dude.

And, uh, you'll see a cameo by our props guy, Karel.

He's the one who found all the tools for the tool room.

He's the kind of the thug on the left who walks out of the hall here.

And this is, this is again, Bonitza.

This is the mental hospital.

It's, it's really weird because where they, the room that they came out of, that's actually Alex's room.

And there's the footprints.

Footprints.

Now, let's talk about Rick Hoffman.

Well, the, the actor who you're about to see is, uh, is an American actor, Rick Hoffman, uh, who's actually a friend of mine who, I can't remember if you guys had been familiar with his work or not, but we, you know.

From cellular.

It was late in the shoot and, you know, it's a relatively small part, but a, you know, very crucial one.

And we were just, you know, running through names and looking at availabilities and, and, you know, I'm never one to, to just bring a friend into a project just to bring a friend into a project.

But I really felt like the qualities that, that, that, that were called for in the script and what Eli was describing actually, you know, fit some stuff that my friend Rick Hoffman had done.

My friend, you know, so I think we, I think we looked at Cellular, which was a movie that Rick was in.

He's also been in TV shows, like, he was on a show called The Street and a, and a, and a Steven Boschko show called Philly.

And he's now on a.

This is Gabe's shot, I should just say.

Putting on the glove.

That was your idea, Gabe.

I thought it was really great.

Illustrated how painful it was to hide his wound.

I'm sorry.

Maybe I should wait till Rick appears, so.

No, that's okay.

We can talk about him.

So, anyway, so I think I showed you this, you know, scene from Cellular and you, I think it, it kind of made sense to you right away.

So we, you know, we got on the phone and, and, you know, a couple days later he was out there shooting the part.

And, uh, it's an important scene that kind of, you know, brings some things together in terms of the exposition of the, of the script.

Yeah.

And a lot of people have told me that this for them is the most disturbing scene in the movie.

That just somehow it's the one that sticks with them.

See the different prices for people.

Just touch the corner.

Here's Rick.

Yeah.

Now, is he really like this?

What do you think?

No, no, no.

Nothing like it.

He, uh, he, uh, he may have contemplated paying to kill somebody overseas, but I don't think he's actually gone through with it.

No, but he's, but the thing about Rick is he does, I think he's an incredible actor and a really, really great guy.

And we knew that if we got the right guy, that this would be one of those roles that like he's in it for two minutes, but could almost steal the movie.

Right.

Well, he's a, he's a sweetheart of a guy who, who's, who's done really well playing the kind of fast talking, you know, arrogant parts.

And, and so he, he, for some reason it's something he does really well.

Yeah.

I mean, he's not, but he does have kind of like a bit of a manic neuroses about him.

And, uh, he really.

Hey, that's my friend you're talking about.

That's right.

But no, I do too.

But he's like, you know, he, he's able to channel it into these characters.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And you see it.

I mean, it's because it, within this one, you know, short scene, he's able to be funny and terrifying.

Yeah.

And he banged his head with a gun.

He kept hitting himself in the head.

You can see it a little bit.

Yeah, you can see it.

And he got a concussion.

Well, before he, you guys were rehearsing on the set.

And some people were coming up to me.

They, they felt a good energy from this guy.

And they were like, hey, your friend, Rick, you know, he's really, like, this is check, you know, crew.

I mean, people are saying, oh, this guy's really good, you know.

People are excited.

But it's toward the end of the shoot.

You know, it's not, we don't have an infinite amount of money left.

It's like, we got to make our days.

And in his first take, he bangs his head with his gun and is bleeding and is about to pass out.

And we might have to take him to the hospital.

So then didn't he also, like, break his tooth or something?

Like, did he want to go to the dentist, too?

Well, he wanted to go to a dentist.

Yeah, I think he, he thought he broke his tooth in the plane ride over.

He's like, can I go to the hospital or the dentist?

Or can I just go to the dentist?

Is that okay?

Is there a dentist in Prague?

Can I do that?

I'll be out in a second, guy.

Can I ask you something personal?

Do you, do you mind?

How'd you do it?

I mean, did you do it real slow?

Or did you, or did you just get it over with right away?

Because that's why I asked for the fucking gun.

Because I just wanted to just--

And again, this is where, you know, we sort of get over the issue of, like, why does Jay get rid of the gun or keep having the gun, and how does he lose it and get it again?

And the idea is that they give you a gun, that if that's how you want to do it, you get, like, two bullets with a gun.

That's it.

Because otherwise you could kill everybody in the place.

Two bullets should be enough to kill somebody.

I was always really impressed at Jay's ability to tie that tie with missing a couple of fingers.

Well, you know, he's good like that.

He's a crafty fella.

But here's, like, the hamper with kind of, like, the bloody towels and robes and gloves.

And this is the, this terrific sugar factory.

And every shot I carefully put, like, people in the background so you always felt like he was just missing someone.

And this, we had asked for a bunch of thugs, and they somehow showed up with a bunch of science and math professors from high school.

And so I couldn't really shoot them close up.

And in the close ups, like, coming up you'll see crew members like Roman.

But I just, it was so cool shooting in this place.

I mean, now you can see the colors, like how different it looks from Amsterdam.

It's gray, it's black, and, you know, it really just helped the overall effect of the film.

All the weeds and the brush and everything, it's just great.

Yeah, and these old Russian cars, the Tatras.

Although some of these cars are, like, used for Russian diplomats.

They're like the top of the line cars for them.

And here we see the bloodhound tattoo and the keychain.

And this is that moment where, you know, he hears her screaming and we call back to that story with the drowning girl.

And is he going to, you know, let that screaming, is he going to hear this screaming in his head for the rest of his life?

And is he going to feel like he couldn't have saved someone and didn't do everything he could?

And he goes back to do it.

And it's interesting.

You can feel it with the audience that this is the moment that, at first when they're running back, they're like, what the fuck are you doing?

But they really feel like, you know, sympathetic.

That was a long fall if he had slipped right there, man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And Jay did all that stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was really, I mean, what we're showing, none of this is a set.

This is all location, including this room here.

And this is sort of like a callback to when Derek walks in the room and the girl's saying, you watch, you pay.

You know, Jay's interrupting someone else.

Having a good time.

And this is a really nice CG shot with a blowtorch where you shoot without the blowtorch and later digitally add in the flame.

And that's why I love practical makeup effects, as you can see with Jennifer Lim's terrific makeup that K&B did.

You know, CG, just a CG blowtorch really adds it.

And the sound guys added that noise as his arm moves.

And all of it just makes it feel real.

And we were going for realism in all of this.

And I think this is probably the only area where I took a little creative liberty with the realism.

Walsner spent a lot of time on that eyeball, though.

I mean, he went through, that eyeball went through a few different incarnations.

And then he finally ended up one that was like a condom with parts of his old eyeball in the end and kind of all flew in there.

Kevin Walsner did an amazing job.

This is probably a four hour setup just for the eye-gasm shot.

And, you know, I thought Jay did a really good job of just, he doesn't want to do it, but he's got to do it.

And she's asking him and she's in pain and he's trying to help her.

And, you know, he gets to do a little surgery of his own.

And I filmed this full on thinking the ratings board would ask me to cut it.

But it all made it in as, oh, there's the eye-chizz.

I just love that.

And the first time we showed it with an audience, people just went fucking nuts.

They were screaming.

They loved it.

Jen was a good screamer.

Jen was an amazing screamer.

Jen was an amazing screamer.

That's something you need in a horror film, someone that really knows how to scream.

And she did an incredible job.

You know, the last, and it's like that smokestack we added digitally, added smoke,

and you can kind of guess what those ashes are now that they've been seeing.

And I love this location and this escape.

And this is Nate's score.

This is where having the orchestra really, really makes it exciting and feel like a big,

huge, much bigger budget movie.

And your assistant director, Roman, coming after him.

And I think this is our Ludeck, our key grip, and, like, Hanza locations.

I had to put crew members in because, like, the extras.

If there were bad extras that showed up, I would not put them on the phone.

There's rad-on props?

Rad-on props, yeah.

With the sunglasses?

Yeah, with the sunglasses.

He did a great job.

He's one of our prop guys.

And they are escaping.

And this bald guy, Peter, they're actually both named Peter.

The shorter guy and the big guy.

There's Big Peter and Little Peter driving after them.

And these guys are stunt guys.

And, you know, I just thought that they looked so good and had such great faces

that we cast them in the roles.

And, you know, they could speak Czech and they didn't have to try and act in English.

Watch out Walken.

No, Walken's there.

It's the guy with one eye that jumps out of the way.

Who you will later see at the train station.

And this was a longer scene of her screaming, but it just felt like we'd cut it down just

to keep the momentum.

And then, yeah, they're heading towards the train station.

Jen also did off-screen screaming to help Jay and his parts.

Like, she really had some pipes, man.

And this, originally the scene was set that they were at a stoplight.

But at the location, we lost our location.

We were in the town, but we couldn't film at this one corner.

It was too busy at intersection.

And Pavel Vakon, our stunt guy.

Pavel did an amazing job.

Let's talk about Pavel and these stunt girls.

You've got this one girl who doubles Barbara.

It's a Russian girl who actually doubled Barbara on another movie.

They really jumped in front of a car.

I mean, and the stunt guys almost ran over their heads.

I mean, they were just amazing.

But it worked out so much better with the van pulling away,

revealing them sitting there.

And then, of course, Alex shows up and, you know.

I mean, this is real cobblestone streets.

And these girls just got hit by a car and fell off and hit the cobblestone.

They were tough.

Tough broads.

Tough, yeah.

And I thought Iana, you know, has this great...

This is always a fun scene to see with an audience.

Yeah, this is the scene where they all just applaud.

And I remember one of the first test screens.

I loved that shot of Iana in the blood.

Screaming, "Run that bitch over!"

And, you know, this was Quentin and Scotty and Boa.

I was going, "Come on, you've got to run them over."

And Pavel here working with the kids.

Yeah, I mean, with the casting session with the kids,

we found about 30 kids.

You know, we had about 50 kids.

We picked 30 kids that could listen.

And Pavel worked with them for about two hours

while I was shooting the scene with Jay in the alley.

Pavel worked with these kids, showing them...

Those kids had real lead pipes, showing them how to swing lead pipes.

And they destroyed this TATRA.

They demolished the car.

But, you know, it was amazing that you had 12 kids.

We just set up three cameras and kind of let them go nuts.

And their parents were there.

Their parents were watching at the monitor,

and they just thought it was great.

And none of the kids got hurt.

I remember one kid got, like, glass in his hand,

and we were like, "Oh, dude, are you all right?"

And the kid's like, "Eh."

Like, he laughed it off.

And everyone says that the gypsy kids don't get sick or hurt.

And these kids are, like, made out of rubber.

It was amazing.

Good break dancers.

Amazing break dancers, which you can see on Gabe's behind the scenes.

And here's the rock.

And here's where CG can be really helpful.

You know, we did a...

Kevin Wassner does a beautiful split on Peter's head,

but Bob Kurtzman and Dave Matherly added this crush,

just boom, just densing it.

And that was me on the ground with Kevin spraying those kids,

and they would foam bricks, and his head gets dented.

I mean, this scene goes on for three minutes.

But, you know, we just wound up cutting it short

because we were getting too far away from Jay.

What do you remember about those kids, Chris?

Well, I just...

I just remember how much fun they had.

And, I mean, honestly, it's such an exciting thing for them

and their parents, and just, it's really remarkable.

But they were so...

You know, there's an adage, I mean, it's like,

the things to avoid working with are kids and animals, you know?

But, in this case, it actually worked out seamlessly.

Yeah, well, when the kids are animals.

I'm just kidding.

They were...

Those kids were having so much fun, and it was really funny.

Like, after the take, we'd all crowd around on the monitor,

and they'd all be, like, pointing at the different shots and laughing.

And I remember those bricks were foam bricks,

and one of them bounced off a window

and almost hit the stunt guy Peter in the head

and really would have crushed his skull.

And the kid picked it up again

and then just threw this Pedro Martinez fastball,

and it went right through the back window

and, like, out the other side and almost hit another kid.

And they're just hysterical laughing about it.

Yeah.

It's tough when you're mixing real bricks with foam bricks, but...

Yeah, the kids got bored with the foam bricks,

and they started picking up the real ones

because they smashed the windows better.

And here we are at the train station,

which is, this is the station that's in Prague.

Pozacani is the name of the station.

And this is about half an hour outside of Prague,

and this is the same station where they get off at the beginning.

And, you know, we shut it down,

and we shot this green screen shot here.

But, you know, we're trying to figure out a way to get them to that car.

You know, sort of see the police are in on it,

and here are some guys we recognize from the factory,

and there's the dude with one eye,

and that other guy on the left, Drahoslav,

is a champion boxer, and a poet, actually.

And, you know, we thought the boxers would be a good device

where they could slowly kind of sneak up.

Where they're not, you know, I tried to put, like,

different layers of extras.

Like, if you look to the right and to the left,

you know, all those people were placed.

There's a mafia guy on the left, and there's a cop on the right,

and then we're shooting it,

and it was just a wonderful coincidence

that that train went by as the camera pushed in,

really added a nice effect to it.

And I thought Nate's music here is really spectacular.

He did a beautiful job.

And this is why we cast Jennifer,

because she can convey so much with her eyes,

and really with one eye.

You know, you're looking.

It's all in her eye.

But this was the moment that I wanted,

and remember she had this on the audition tape this moment.

Yeah, I think that's what really got her the part.

And I think that her last look over at Jane,

you can start to see the cops in the background

starting to notice what's going on.

And here comes that other train,

and it was a lot to coordinate at this train station.

And you know our locations guy, Hansa,

they really did a terrific job of getting those locations,

and everything worked really well.

Here's the big splatter.

Yeah, and here comes the big splatter.

Fire extinguishers.

With a comp, and then it's her head dummy getting crushed.

This now was like one of the most fun days

when we got to spray the extras with blood there.

We told them that, we said who wants to get bloody,

and we gave them wardrobe.

And we had 12 people,

and we put them in like different groups of four.

But we didn't show them what we were doing to the other people.

And I think they thought they were going to get a little blood.

And I'd roll the camera and not say action.

I'd just start talking and then just kind of give a little sign.

And then just Howard and Kevin just blasted them.

And they were so excited that the first two tanks,

both of their hands are in the frame.

Like you just see this white glove come up

and the handspring the nozzle.

Those are the same fire extinguishers used on Kill Bill.

And this is a real train set.

I mean, this is an actual moving train that we're on.

You know, we just picked the color because I like the red.

And I thought Jay did a great job here,

just kind of realizing, like, are you fucking kidding me?

Is this actually that guy?

But this is tight.

You know, it's really tight to get a camera move in there.

But, you know, we had such a great team of grips, the camera crews.

And this is Lavni Nadrazi.

This station is actually in Prague.

But we sort of faked it like it was Vienna.

So we have, like, the signage in German

and the announcements in the background in German.

It's the biggest moment in the film right here.

The grand reveal of the gross hits.

I know.

And there it is, the greatest hits, Mark Bakunas.

If you look in the list, that's me, Chris Briggs, Mike Fleiss.

And you can see the Bakunas just so clearly there.

Like, his greatest hits are on DVD.

But even, like, Ausgang, Exit, like, we put all the...

We changed all the signage so that it would be in German and English

and a few different languages.

And I think this is some of my favorite.

This was the reshoot.

This was the ending that we reshot.

And I thought that Milan Khadova did such a superb job with the photography here.

Really gave it kind of that De Palma or Hitchcockian feel of the European train station.

And Nate's score and the way it was cut with George, it just all came together.

Good hair continuity?

Yes, good hair continuity.

But here he is without his daughter.

How did you feel about reshooting, Chris?

Well, I think that's, you know, it's always a tough thing to decide.

I mean, 'cause we liked what we had, certainly.

But I think by the time we did it, you know, we planned everything out.

And I think we got excited.

And it was, you know, it was also, it was fun to go back and get together with the crew.

And, you know, I'm actually really happy with how it came out.

Me too.

Now this, right in the front there, there are normally these two old ladies that sit there

and charge money for everyone that goes in to take a piss.

And they're like 90 years old.

And it just smells like a train station bathroom.

And they sit there and they wouldn't leave.

So we kept trying to get the shot of him walking in the door.

But they kept coming back and sitting down.

And I think we actually had to lock them in a closet.

I think that's what we did to get rid of them.

But they just couldn't let it go.

They wanted to charge.

They wanted to sit there.

It was pretty funny.

But then they let me pee for free after that.

So it's like I get a lifetime pass.

How is this?

This is like one of the best actors in the Czech Republic.

Yeah.

And this was, you know, Chris Nelson made a terrific hand for this reshoot scene here.

And we had two stages.

So in one set, there's Shane who actually shot our second unit for this reshoot stuff.

And, you know, we had Shane and Roman shooting all the inserts.

Like, okay, we need to see the teeth and the head.

Like, it was so tight in there.

You had to film all the overhead angles.

Like that was on, the two sets were right next to each other.

That's all like the B stage.

That's the B stage.

That's the B stage.

That's the B stage.

And that was the stunt guy.

We had two hands made up.

And that's the A stage with Jay and Jan.

And, you know, we just shot listed everything.

And I love that moment where they look at each other.

That call back.

And this was Clint Culpepper from Screen Gems.

His suggestion.

And I got to say that, you know, it was Clint Culpepper, the head of Screen Gems, the one who read the script and initially gave us the money to do it or agreed to buy the film as a negative pickup.

I love these B camera shots these guys did really.

Roman and everyone in Shane did a really nice job.

And there's Phillip Whaley, our line producer, in his Chelsea shirt behind Jay.

And Chris is there too, but just barely.

Yeah, you can see my music here is fantastic.

But, you know, Clint was the one who was saying you should, you know, stuff his head in the toilet and slit his throat.

And Gabe, you talked about slicing off the fingers.

Yeah, well, I do love the other ending, but I figured if you're going to go for it, might as well get a little payback and take off those fingers.

I think once we saw it with an audience, I mean, you know, intellectually, people might not want to see that kind of revenge, but emotionally, that's what they want to see.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's clear.

I mean, we saw it and people just went berserk.

And you could feel it.

You could feel it.

That's what people wanted and let's do it and let's do it well.

And here, I love Nate's music here.

You know, and of course, we credited Takashi Miike as Miike Takashi.

And we gave him Mild the Jedi Havlas was his name.

And you can see Angry Dutch Elf.

That was the Lego-ass guy.

Mutton Chop.

That was the guard.

We gave Roman Bottle Thor.

The Shemp, because they double the other girls.

Gabe Sir Robert Wapis, a reference to someone we met years ago in Rock God, Mark Bakunas.

I mean, he's not acting there.

He actually is a rock god.

And our terrific stunt guys.

I mean, Pavel Vakon and everyone.

Pavlina, our production manager.

Mark Taylor, the AD.

And I'm just reading the credits, but everyone did such a terrific job.

Tomáš, sound mixer.

And, you know, I would shoot in the Czech Republic again in a heartbeat.

I mean, the only thing that was difficult is, yeah, sometimes when you're in a restaurant,

it takes a little longer because they have three-hour meals.

But it was really, really great.

The worst part about Czech Republic was leaving.

I didn't want to leave.

I felt like I was being deported.

But there's no water in the toilets.

It's like, I swear to God, it's the weirdest thing.

I don't know why they do that.

It's very strange.

You're like, what the hell?

It's another way to take your temperature.

Yeah.

Feel the heat coming off your dump.

Feel the heat.

Yeah.

And I gave Roman second unit director credit because he really earned it.

And Martin did a terrific job with photography.

And Shane, who shot that bathroom stuff at the end.

Because Martin was on another movie at that point.

And everybody just did such a great job.

Greg Nicotero and Howard Berger and the whole gang.

Everybody from K&B.

You know, they build a lot of the stuff in Los Angeles.

And I remember we went over there and we saw the burn makeup crisp.

We went over there and they'd done it on Lucy Liu's head.

That place is amazing.

It's like the mecca for, you know, for horror fans.

I mean, just what they're working on at any given time is totally horrific or totally inspiring.

All those weird corpses for the island they had around there.

And Bob Beamer and Tatum Kohut.

Brian and Sean.

Everyone did such a great job at sound.

And I'd say it was Nathan Barr's wife, Elizabeth, who sung the background vocals.

Those, like, floating, beautiful, angelic vocals when they walk into the room and they see the girls.

And it was so terrific.

I mean, she sang on Last Temptation of Christ.

And she sang the end of King Kong.

And she sings in Munich.

She's an amazing, amazing singer.

You had a lot of connections to Last Temptation of Christ.

Yeah, Kevin Wasserman did the blood on Last Temptation of Christ.

Under the Passion of the Christ.

Under the Passion of the Christ.

That's what I mean.

That other Christ movie.

And the sound mixers, the sound team did it.

Did Passion of the Christ.

So hopefully people will die from this movie, too.

66 Degrees North, my favorite stores in Iceland.

I love their clothes.

Gave us clothes.

And the Red Sox gave us permission to use the jersey.

And, you know, Peter Jackson was so helpful.

Giving me those quotes for Cabin Fever.

And Harry Knowles with the initial idea.

And Miki for doing it.

For coming over.

It was really cool.

And then we just threw in Natalia's Evil.

That make you my bitch.

So thank you.

I hope you guys have learned a little something about how we made the movie.

And you'll listen to our other commentaries.

I tried to keep them one different from another.

And hopefully we have.

Watch the behind the scenes.

And Chris, do you want to say anything?

Uh, no.

That's it.

Perfect.