Original subtitles

Hey, what's up, everybody? It's Eli Roth here doing my director's commentary for Hostel.

Now, this track, it is just me. Not gonna have any actors, any producers, you know, no phoners, nothing.

This is just me talking about the movie, and you're stuck with me.

So, the first question you might have is why are there, you know, four or five different commentary tracks on this DVD?

And I'll tell you, I got a lot to say. It's hard to shut me up, especially when I'm talking about horror movies.

And I feel like I can't fit it all into 90 minutes.

This commentary is really gonna be about my experience after Cabin Fever, getting Hostel up and running.

It's not gonna be so much technical stuff about shooting different scenes. I'll do that on the producer's track.

This is really more towards film students and fans that wonder what's it like being a director who's made your first film that's a hit.

And you're now gonna get it, you know, now it's been out there in the world, and you're gonna make your second movie.

What happens? What do you do next? How do you know what's the right second film?

And it took a long time for me to get Hostel. Not to get it going, but for me to choose Hostel as my second film.

So, let me start where I picked up on the last DVD I did for Cabin Fever.

And that's life after Cabin Fever. It was a pretty crazy time for me because, you know, we made the movie for a million and a half dollars.

And it wound up being Lionsgate's highest grossing movie of the year that year.

And it came out on DVD and with everything it wound up making, I think, like over a hundred million dollars around the world.

God forbid any of that money went to me, mind you. But still, what it did do was it was able to open up all kinds of doors for me.

You know, all of a sudden, you know, here I was, I was this kid at the Fangori convention waiting in line for Kane Hodder's autograph.

And next thing you know, I had every studio in town calling wanting to meet me and take meetings.

And what was really cool was people saw me as not just a horror movie director.

They said, OK, this guy connects with young audiences. We can, you know, let's push him for, you know, for teen comedies, for other types of films.

And, you know, I went and met on movies like Dawn of the Dead or the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake.

And even though obviously I didn't direct them, it was, it was really cool to be considered because suddenly, you know, no one ever took me seriously as a director.

And then I made my film and it came out and made lots of money for a lot of people.

And, you know, now you're in this position where, you know, you can get another movie going.

And, you know, one of the fun things I did with Cabin Fever was go to film festivals.

I got to go to the Sitges Film Festival. I went to Brussels. I went to Fantasia in Montreal.

I went all over the world with that film.

And what I realized was there are a lot of movies out there that are way better than the films the studios are making.

I mean, I suddenly started seeing movies like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Audition.

And, you know, before Cabin Fever I didn't know Takashi Miike.

I didn't know Hideo Nakato. I didn't know Chan-wook Park.

And all of a sudden I'm seeing these incredible movies coming out of South Korea and Japan that were so unbelievably violent and sick and fucked up that were really made for adults.

That weren't just watered down for the masses.

And I thought that's what I want to do. I want to do a movie like that.

A movie that's about, you know, something that really disturbs me and freaks me out.

That's not going to be, you know, some watered down piece of crap.

But at the same time I'd like to eat.

And, you know, Cabin Fever I didn't, you know, I didn't take a paycheck.

I barely, I just basically the money I made on that went to pay off the credit card debts I had made in the film.

So all of a sudden, you know, I got a, you know, I sold a pitch to Universal and I wrote the draft to that script and then they were bringing another to rewrite it, another person to rewrite it.

And, you know, I had all these kind of different projects set up at studios where you go and you have a meeting and they say, what do you want to do?

And I say, well, you know, I kind of want to do this or maybe I want to do that.

And they go, okay, well, let's, you know, let's, let's meet with my boss about it.

And then you go back and have another pitch meeting and another pitch meeting and eventually it gets sold.

And then they have to, you know, spend six months making your deal.

And it's just this long drawn out process where eventually I realized that I wasn't writing.

I was taking meetings and I didn't want to turn down meetings.

You know, imagine if you can't get somebody on the phone, nobody knows who you are.

But then all of a sudden every executive at every production company and studio feels that you're a good meeting.

And, and you know what, you got to meet these people and you got to get out there and it's an important part of the job.

But by the same time, what I, what I realized I was doing was I was getting farther and farther away from filmmaking.

And one of the really fun things I did was set up a horror company with Bo Azikin and Scott Spiegel called Raw Nerve.

And we were going to produce a few different low budget horror movies a year.

And we, we did the first one called 2001 Maniacs, which, you know, we certainly learned a lot.

It was a really, really difficult shoot because we were drastically under budgeted.

And, you know, it just sort of sucked up a lot of my energy and I just felt like I was getting farther and farther away from, from writing and directing.

And one of the things that's, that's great about living in Los Angeles is I've been able to meet my heroes.

I mean, I've met so many wonderful horror directors who've been so, so cool and so nice and so supportive.

Guys like Toby Hooper and a director like Guillermo del Toro and Mick Garris, John Landis.

They've really, really been great.

Um, and after, uh, there was a screening of Cabin Fever at the Los Angeles Film Festival before it came out and Tarantino came to see it.

And he invited me to, he loved the movie and invited me to his house to watch movies.

So I went over there and we screened Howard Berger's print of War of the Gargantuas and just totally geeked out at Quentin's house and he showed a scene from Kill Bill.

And, you know, he gave me the most incredible advice that anyone had given me up to that point, which was to go all around the world to every film festival.

And, you know, you know, just, just meet other people and get your name out there and go and talk to the press and let them know how much you love movies from their country and talk about movies and, you know, make yourself the star that that that's what you have to do.

You have to get people to know who you are by traveling around and meeting the critics.

And as soon as he told me that I basically signed up for this world trip to go around the world.

And, uh, that was really Quentin who encouraged me to do that.

And then we struck up this friendship where we're just watching movies and, and, um, I was at his house one day and I was, I was at this weird point where I just didn't know what to do next.

It had been about, you know, a year and a half since Cabin Fever had come out.

I mean, I shot the movie in 2001, it was sold in 2002, but it didn't get released in theaters until a year later in 2003.

So there was this weird holding pattern where people kind of wanted to wait to see how the movie did before I got my next film going.

And eventually once the movie came out and did well, then that's sort of when, when offers and things started, started coming in.

And I just wasn't sure what to do.

And I said to Quentin, you know, what, what should I do next?

There's this, uh, this remake of The Bad Seed I'm going to do.

And there's this, uh, project I have about my high school called Scavenger Hunt.

And the script's not, the script's being rewritten.

And then Rich Kelly and I have been writing this thing called The Box, but he's busy writing this movie Domino.

And I just don't know what to do next.

I mean, what is my second film?

Do I do a $40 million studio movie where I might not get to control the production?

Do I do like a, maybe like a $10 million horror movie where I can have some more control?

Do I do another horror movie even?

You know, some horror directors had said, don't do a horror movie as your second film.

You'll get pegged as horror guy.

And, um, you know, I, I thought about that and I just thought, you know what?

This is all I ever wanted to do with my life.

I mean, if I want to do a drama one day, I'll do it.

If I want to do a kid's film, I'll do it.

If I want to do a comedy, I'll do it.

But I love horror movies and I felt like Cabin Fever was really me just trying everything.

I was trying lots of different styles.

This is my homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

This is my homage to The Thing.

And I made a very conscious decision with Hostel that I was not going to try and purposely take shots from other movies.

I was really influenced by, uh, films like Audition, uh, The Wicker Man, which I've recently become a huge fan of.

And, um, there's a Dutch film called The Vanishing.

Do not rent the American remake. Rent the Dutch version.

The Vanishing. Also, Spoelos, I believe, is the Dutch title of it.

Uh, very disturbing movie.

And, and I said, I want to make a movie like these films.

And I told Quentin the idea and he was like, that is the sickest fucking idea I've ever heard.

He's like, Eli, man, you've got to do this.

You've got to write this movie.

You should do it with raw nerve, do a low budget, go home and write this movie.

And he just got me so excited and pumped up.

I, uh, it's like, you know, once, once Quentin is, finds an idea disturbing, then you know it's really sick.

And I just drove home that day and I unplugged my phone, unplugged my computer and I just burned out the draft.

And I just started typing like I was possessed.

And I guess I should start, start with the genesis of the idea.

Started with a phone call that I had with Harry Knowles.

And we talk about this on one of the other commentary tracks where we were talking about the sickest stuff you can find on the internet.

And Harry had found this site that he sent me a link to where you could walk into a room and shoot someone in the head.

And you could pay $10,000 to kill an anonymous human being.

And it was so disturbing and so real.

And we sat there and we thought, how could this be real?

I mean, who would, who would actually do this?

And then I thought, you know what?

It doesn't matter if it's real or fake.

And what matters is that somebody built a website for this and conceptualized it out there.

There's some businessman that's so numb, that's so jaded that drugs doesn't get them off anymore.

And hookers doesn't get them off.

Like nothing does it for them that they want to know what it feels like to kill somebody.

That's, that's what excites them.

And right after "Cabin' Fever" came out, I had a meeting with Mike Fleiss and his friend Chris Briggs.

And Fleiss, you know, did the "Chainsaw" remake.

And, you know, Chris had this idea about backpackers.

He said, you know, I want to do a movie that's set in the backpacking world.

You know, I love hostelling.

And I'd lived in France as an exchange student and backpacked around and stayed in hostels before.

And I loved the title and the double meaning.

And, you know, we, we didn't really know what the movie was.

I said, you know, I don't know, how do you, what was it?

Is it people getting killed at a hostel?

Is there some evil hostel there?

You know, is it vampires?

What, what is this movie?

And then I remember I was sitting there one morning actually at "Raw Nerve" with Boaz and Scott.

And I just sort of saw the entire movie.

I thought, oh my God, the hostel is just the net.

It's about this thing in Thailand where you can, where you can pay to kill somebody.

And, and the hostels, that's how they get the kids.

They use the girls to lure the guys and they have their passport.

Because whenever you stay at a hostel, you have to leave your passport there.

And, you know, that's what this movie is about.

And I just had seen a lot of people who take trips to Vegas, take trips to Amsterdam.

They always talk about doing drugs and getting hookers.

And I kind of saw this parallel, this weird sort of mirror image of these guys that are in Amsterdam going to get hookers and do drugs and do all these things that you can't supposedly do in the United States, even though you can if you really want to.

The stuff you're not supposed to do, the forbidden things, the taboo things, and what these businessmen are doing, you know, in Slovakia where they're going and paying to kill people.

That I felt like, and that's, that's why I purposely made Amsterdam to be, the first act really mirrors the third act.

You know, that's why Josh says, you know, I don't know, paying to go into a room to, you know, to do whatever you want to someone, it's not my idea of a turn on.

Well, they still, they still does it. And, and Josh walking up and down, you know, it's Josh doesn't have sex, but he still goes, you know, he goes into the brothel with the guys and his friends do it.

And somebody else, that is a good idea. They, they, they want to pay to go into a room, do whatever they want to Josh.

You know, these guys are making fun of the hookers in the beginning, but eventually they wind up as the hookers in the window, you know, they become the meat, the attraction.

And, you know, I just really liked the idea that, that Josh walks up and down the hall and looks in the room and, you know, in this voyeuristic way, sees all these different sexual acts.

And then when, you know, Paxton gets dragged down the hall, he looks in the rooms and sees all these different, he, he, it's sort of that hell version of that.

Um, and so, you know, I told Quentin the idea and he's like, you've got to write this.

So I sat down and I burned down the draft and I, the first people I showed it to were Boaz and Scotty, you know, I took it over their house and I was like, so what do you guys think?

And, and they, they loved it. They're like, oh my God, this is really fucking sick.

And, and if we shoot this in Eastern Europe, we could make this movie for like 3 million bucks and make it as sick as we wanted and go NC-17.

And, and, um, they had their own, you know, they had great ideas.

I mean, Boaz wrote and directed Fresh and directed Remember the Titans and rewrote that script.

And Scotty, you know, wrote Evil Dead 2 with Raimi and, you know, he knew Quentin from years ago from Dusk Till Dawn too.

And, and these guys are all old friends and, and, you know, we talked about the kids and Boaz, Boaz was like, you know, I love a marathon, man.

When Dustin Hoffman's got these neighbors and he, and he, you know, they're just always like this menacing, they're like, they're like this threat.

And then they kind of come and wind up actually saving him and getting the bad guys.

And what if there's something with street kids? And, and I'd seen this documentary called Children Underground, where it was about these street kids in Romania that were going around in packs and that would, they'll, they'll fuck you up.

These kids will kill you. And it's not like that at all in Prague or in the Czech Republic or Slovakia, but, you know, I just kind of took that idea and put it into the story and, you know, had them sort of saving Paxton.

And that was a whole other thing. Shooting with those kids was so much fun. Those kids were fucking hilarious.

As you may have seen in the behind the scenes when, you know, they're break dancing and rapping. And so, you know, the production, so I wrote the script and I said, I'm fucking shooting this movie.

You know, when I set my mind to something, I'm, I'm, I'm going to do it. Like not, I get possessed and nothing will stop me. And I wrote the script and I showed it to Quentin and he's like, this is fucking awesome.

This is one of the best scripts I've ever read. Like, you know, I, you know, I'd like to make this a Quentin Tarantino Presents. This would be so cool.

And it'd be so fun to do it with you and Boaz and Scotty. And, uh, you know, I told Briggs and Fleiss and, and showed those guys the script and they couldn't believe that I had written it that fast.

Like they, they, you know, they, they're doing the, they're producing the Poseidon adventure, which is $200 million, but you know, monster movie.

And, uh, it's just, it's like this slow going thing. It's, it's like an ocean liner. It really is.

And, and I was like the speed boat, just like, fuck it, man, we're going ahead. We're, we're going to do it.

And as soon as the script was done, uh, you know, I met with this producer, his co-producer, Dan Frisch.

And I talked to George Folsey, uh, and his son Ryan cut, uh, Cabin Fever.

And George is a dear friend and was really, really helpful in getting Cabin Fever, helping me finish that movie and get the money for it.

And, um, you know, he read the script and he said, oh, if you want to shoot in Prague, he was cutting Pink Panther and said, you know, they did some, they shot some scenes over there.

And these guys at this company, IPC are awesome. And I met with a co-producer, Dan Frisch.

And he said, dude, if you want to shoot there, just come to Prague. We'll do a scout.

So the next week I bought a ticket. And I remember like, I just finished the script.

Dan was in Prague. I got on the plane. I flew to Prague and was just spending my own money doing it.

And I told everyone, we are shooting this movie. We're shooting in January. We better, we better have it scouted.

And everything takes so fucking long in Hollywood. People thought, yeah, yeah, right. He's just talking.

But while everyone else was kind of hanging out over Christmas break, I went to Prague and I location scouted.

And what was so great was writing the script and getting off the plane and basically everything that I had in my head actually existed.

It was all there. It was all in Prague. You know, I said, God, I want to find this little kind of Harry Potter type village.

You know, there's something that, that you just, you walk there and you can't believe it's there.

It's like this little fantasy land. And I, they said, well, what about Chesky Kremlov?

And we drove there two and a half hours from Prague. And I should say that everyone said to me,

if you're going to shoot in Eastern Europe, the preference, the best place to shoot is Prague.

After that, Romania and then Sofia, Bulgaria. And Prague is the most expensive, but it's still cheaper than shooting the United States.

And I had such a fucking horrible time with the unions. You know, there were such assholes to me on Cabin Fever.

I have no problem with unions. And I think if you're making a $60 million studio movie and it's Warner Brothers money,

it's, it's fine to have unions, but Cabin Fever was made on credit cards.

You know, it was like people's personal money is like $10,000 for my aunt Gladys.

Like it was that kind of a movie. And the union shut us down, even though we weren't violating any laws and said,

you've got to now pay back pay and overtime and pay for our healthcare and all this other stuff.

That's like, you're, you're basically asking, you know, individuals that aren't rich, but just have a little bit of money to invest to then pay all this nonsense and overtime.

And once the movie came out in the box office, they said, okay, well, you've now got to pay us.

And they, they started suing us. And I said, look, you know, the movie's been out in the theaters for a week.

We don't get any money for a year until after it's released. And they said, fuck you pay us.

So I said, you know what? Fuck you assholes. I'm going to go shoot a movie in Prague.

And now I'm going to shoot all my movies there because fuck you, because I don't want to get extorted by you because there are better ways to make movies.

Because, and that's why production gets driven out of the United States. It's the unions, it's fucking extortion.

And I understand why unions are there. And I think they're very important.

And Hey, I'm a member of the writers guild and the screen actors guild. Like it's great to be protected.

It's very important to protect people. But the problem is they will hit any production.

And any production that's, you know, if you're making a movie for half a million dollars, the unions will shut you down.

And it's just too expensive. You can't shoot a movie in the United States anymore independently.

So I said, fuck it. I'm going to Prague. And God, am I happy I did.

I loved the people there. The crews were fantastic. They were so unbelievable.

I had the same crew that had worked on Doom and Hellboy and the Brothers Grimm.

I mean, these guys are really, really up to speed.

And Dan Frisch is an American guy and his partner Philip Whaley is British.

They have a company based out of Prague called IPC.

And what happens when you go to Prague, I can't just show up and hire the crew.

You get what's called a production services company.

And the production services company brings you the camera people and they make all the deals.

And they deal with the taxes and all that kind of stuff that you'd never want to deal with.

And, you know, they really had a terrific reputation.

And I also knew that not only could they service the movie, but it'd be smart to bring these guys on as the producers.

You know, Dan came on as a co-producer and Philip came on as a co-producer and the line producer.

So instead of us figuring out the money and how much we're going to pay this person, I basically put them in charge of all of that.

And everything got done and it got done so efficiently and so well that I would highly recommend anyone shooting a movie in Prague to use IPC.

So I showed up there and we said, okay, let's go to this village.

So I went to this village and I couldn't believe it.

It was just like it was out of my head.

It was like this fantasy village.

Everything was perfect.

And then I said, well, I want to film in these factories.

And they said, well, let's go.

Let's look at this place in Daksani, this old sugar factory.

And it was perfect.

I mean, I saw that's exactly what we shot in the film.

And I said, well, what can we use for the downstairs, for the, you know, the tunnels?

And they said, well, there's this mental hospital that closed down.

We went there and saw it and it's just everything.

It all really came together.

I knew that I had to shoot there.

And one of the things that was great was I photographed every location.

So when I went back to the United States in January, I printed out photos of everything

I'd shot and kind of made poster boards.

Okay, this is the exterior of the hostel.

And this is what the village looks like.

And this is where we're going to shoot the red light district.

And I'd sat down with Philip and we'd gone over the budget.

And we, I had already interviewed crew members.

I mean, I didn't have the money in the bank, but I knew I was going to get it.

I mean, after cabin fever, I had so many different sources that wanted to finance films.

And we had our own money with raw nerve to pay for movies.

So we said, what's this really going to cost?

And it came out at more than three.

It was like, okay, we really need $4 million to make this movie and to do it with a 40-day shoot the way I want.

And, you know, I came back to the United States and I had these presentations.

So Sony Screen Gems, Clint Culpepper Screen Gems, who got a copy of the script while I was in Prague and said,

you know what, I want to pick this movie up for worldwide distribution.

I want this movie.

And so we made a deal with him.

And when I sat down to talk to him about the script, you know, I could show him the boards.

I said, okay, this is what the brothel looks like.

This is what the factory looks like.

So there's really no guesswork.

And everything in the movie, all the violence, everything is graphically described.

I wrote all of it.

I put all of that into the script because I didn't want any surprises.

I said, this is not a movie for everybody.

I don't want to, like, try and pretend it's going to be a soft horror film.

This is a very violent, sick horror movie where really horrible things are going to happen to people.

And, you know, it's all based on this website that, you know, all the stuff that I've seen that's happening for real.

You know, this movie also really came out of my fears of those Al-Qaeda videos.

I mean, I made the mistake of clicking on one of those and I just said, oh, my God, you know, I saw someone get decapitated and it was real.

And I couldn't get it out of my head.

And I thought, Jesus Christ, what if you're in a room and someone's going to cut your head off?

And no matter what you say to them, no matter how much money you offer them, they're going to do it.

And that's it.

You're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And, God, let's take away the political element.

I don't want to make a political movie.

I don't want to make a movie with webcams or any of that.

What if someone was going to come in the room and do it, like, as a sexual act?

That's really disturbing.

Then there's no way you're going to stop them because they're getting off on how terrified you are.

And that's what really freaked me out.

And, you know, it's interesting to see the reaction from the Czech people reading the script.

You know, we're making a movie that's set in Slovakia and 15 years ago it was Czechoslovakia.

So, you know, a lot of the crew members were from Slovakia.

And I said, well, what did you think?

And they loved it.

And, you know, they thought, you know, do you really think people in Slovakia are like this?

And I pointed out that the people that are actually doing the worst shit are other Americans.

I mean, my feeling with this movie is that it's all kind of run by the Russian mafia.

It's not Slovakia that's doing it.

It's just that's a place where communism has fallen and the dollar has taken over in some areas.

And, you know, it's a very nice, peaceful place.

But I liked it because I felt like, well, you know what, the people from Slovakia aren't doing anything wrong.

They're just kind of letting it happen there.

It's, you know, the people that are doing the worst shit are Americans and Germans and Japanese, the so-called Western nations, you know, our allies.

They're the ones that are actually committing these crimes.

And if they wouldn't do it, if there was no demand for it, such an industry wouldn't exist.

So they got that.

They got that.

And now we cut to the Slovakian disco.

This was a club called the Guru Club.

And you'll notice there's a bit of smoke.

What we originally did was there was a transition where Athor, the character Oli, jumped up and down in the sauna and started singing, "Kalinka, Kalinka," which is some old Russian folk song.

And he poured water on the coals and there was a steam.

And that was the transition.

And I love that face he makes there jumping up and down.

Honestly, that's what Athor is really like.

You can hear him.

He calls in.

We did a phone call with him to Iceland on the actor's commentary.

But he's just this dude that I met when I went to Iceland for Cabin Fever.

It's weird.

Iceland has kind of inspired two movies in a strange way.

It inspired Cabin Fever where I got this flesh-eating disease in my face and shaved half my face off.

And then I went there with Cabin Fever.

And my friend E.C. distributed the movie.

And he's like, "You've got to meet my friend Athor."

And Athor, we just had the best time.

He took us out and around.

And that's exactly what he's like.

And I love the look on Jay Hernandez's face here as Josh is just talking about his ex-girlfriend.

Like as if Barbara really gives a shit.

And I think she does a really nice job.

I'm like, "Yeah, that's nice."

"Hey, look, there's Vala."

And this is a dance routine that Yana and Athor rehearsed.

And there's the Sneaper Patrol T-shirt.

It was made by my friend Tim League as a T-shirt store called Mondo Tees in Texas.

And if you go to MondoTees.com, you can actually buy that Sneaper Patrol shirt.

He made it for us for the film, which I thought was really cool.

I don't smoke.

And I hate it when a girl that's really hot is smoking.

And you really want to hook up with her, but she's smoking.

And you have to pretend like you're okay with it.

But I have asthma.

And I'm allergic to cigarettes.

And I think it's fucking disgusting.

And any girl that smokes, they wind up tasting like an ashtray anyways.

So sorry for all you smokers out there.

But I'm not against people who smoke.

But I don't like making out with girls who do smoke.

And so this club, Exterior, this was...

I remember, God, it was raining this night that we filmed this.

And there's Josh with his asthma spray.

And here comes the Bubblegum Gang.

These kids were so fucking funny.

This kid, Patryk.

Patryku.

In the Czech Republic, they add the word "oo" to everyone's name.

Sort of as a familiar thing.

They wouldn't say Eli-oo.

They just called me Garilka.

But Patryku was kind of the leader of the Bubblegum Gang.

And those kids were so funny.

We had such a good time shooting with them.

The only problem was that they would crack up a lot.

So there were a lot of tics that we couldn't use

because the kids were just giggling.

And here's this really nice moment with Jan and Derek,

where after Derek, you know, Josh is freaked out

at the Dutch businessman on the train.

The guy kind of saves him.

And now they have this weird scene together.

I love misdirection in movies.

I love in Psycho where you're following Janet Leigh

and suddenly she's killed off.

And one of the things that I very consciously did

was to make Josh the main character

and then kill him off on purpose.

And everything is from his point of view.

If you notice, Jay Hernandez is really kind of a character

in the background.

In the sex scene, you know, he's sort of in the background.

At the scene of the bar, he's in the background.

And it's really all about Josh and Josh's experience.

And we're seeing the whole thing through Josh's eyes.

You know, he goes to the brothel and sees the hookers.

It's all his point of view.

And that was all because I knew the audience would think

that he's the nice guy and he's going to live till the end.

And I wanted the audience to feel as lost and helpless as Paxton does.

And I felt that building things up so that we're seeing it completely

from Josh's point of view in the photography and the storytelling,

the dialogue and everything.

It's all, you know, this is Josh's experience

and his friends are along for the ride.

Then when you kill him, you're sort of stuck with this guy

who's kind of a dickhead and you'd really feel disoriented.

You know, the person that we feel like we know the most is gone.

And now we're in a foreign land and the girls who we thought we knew,

and they're very beautiful in this scene.

And we had the makeup.

There's really not a lot of makeup that they have on here.

This is really what they look like.

You know, the next time we see them, they're all ugly and drugged out.

And I thought Aether was really funny here, humping Derek.

And this actually happened, I think, at the Toronto Film Festival.

Aether and his girlfriend were staring in a room and Derek was in the bed.

And, I don't know, some strange things went on.

You'd have to ask Aether about it.

Wardrobe gave Jay the most ridiculous underwear possible.

And we switched it after the first take.

But just to torture Jay, I kept it in the movie.

And this scene was very difficult to shoot.

I mean, it was so tight in these rooms.

And, of course, we're filming a sex scene in a monastery.

So that's always, you know, ensures my one-way ticket to hell,

which I've already, you know, purchased this long ago.

But it was difficult to get the girls to feel comfortable

during the sex scene.

I mean, I remember I made the mistake of showing them the dailies

in the club where Aether is fucking that girl in the bathroom

and taking the picture on his camera phone.

And that's supposed to look raunchy and raw and it's all green.

And, you know, it looks kind of disgusting and dirty.

And they freaked out and thought that we were going to shoot their sex scene that way.

But, you know, this is one of the things, okay, you shoot this at week seven.

Don't shoot this week one so that the actors are all really comfortable with each other.

And Derek just looks so happy.

I mean, you just feel like this is the first time maybe this guy's even had sex,

let alone with a girl, you know, this beautiful.

And, you know, Jay is just kind of there.

And for me, the scene is really about that moment between the two girls looking at each other.

We just start to feel like something's wrong.

And after this fade out here, when we fade up, we're kind of in a different movie.

This was a big transition for me that the fun's over.

And even though it looks really nice and peaceful and sunny and happy,

there's going to be something eerie.

And this is where I really started to make a tonal shift where, you know,

the sex in the movie starts to disappear.

And it's much more of a kind of this weird, creepy mystery.

This film that I love, The Wicker Man, that I've talked about a number of times

in the various commentaries, has this police detective in this town, in this village,

and he's completely an outsider.

And this village is this whole cult.

And, you know, that's what I wanted these guys to feel like.

I want them to feel like they are the outsiders.

And, you know, people are friendly and nice, but you don't really know if you can trust everybody.

And originally we had a scene with Aethor in the spa and being led into a van.

And it was Quentin's idea to cut it.

Quentin suggested if we cut that scene so that the audience is as clueless as the characters,

then when we show that shot of the bed, it's going to be so much scarier.

And this is Milda, our production assistant, who we talk about in the producer's commentary.

You can listen to that whole story.

This movie that's playing on the television is actually a Slovakian movie.

It was one of the few Slovakian movies I was able to find and get the rights to.

And, you know, there's no subtitles.

And I like that Paxton makes a comment about it that he wants everything spelled out.

And, of course, later when he talks German, there are no subtitles.

And that was one of the decisions I made to not have any subtitles in the movie.

I have nine different languages.

But I wanted people to feel this sense of alienation and feel like they're in another planet.

And I love this movie Mute Witness.

Mute Witness is one of my favorite films from the early 90s that Anthony Waller directed.

And in Mute Witness, there are these scenes where these people are talking Russian.

And there's no subtitles.

And there's a guy that you've seen kill somebody.

And the girl is trying to report him to the police.

And he starts talking with a cop in Russian.

And you're like, what the fuck's going on?

And you're as clueless as she is.

And I thought it was very effective.

And here we start to see Kana.

And I think that Jennifer does a really, really nice job here of stopping the guys.

Jennifer Lim, who's a British actress.

You know, everything is suddenly serious.

You know, it's not fun anymore.

And we even changed the tone.

Like, when they first arrived, I made this courtyard really colorful and have lots of birds.

And here there's less birds.

And eventually when Jay Hernandez walks out, there's just crows ca-cawing.

And there was a line that we had earlier where Oli explained why he didn't like Asian girls.

But it sort of got cut.

That was something in the red light district.

It was one of the things that was the guys making fun of hookers.

You know, I kind of had them all being a little bit misogynistic.

And, you know, I like that they make fun of the hookers.

And then they wind up, you know, of course, as the hookers in the window.

This is the first day of shooting.

And you can tell it's the first day of shooting.

Because look at Derek Richardson's hair.

I mean, are you fucking kidding me?

How much shorter is his hair?

And now, like, and once you point it out, you know, whenever I watch the scene, it just absolutely tortures me.

But that's just one of those things that slipped through the cracks.

But I thought the guys did a really nice job.

You know, this was a tough scene to shoot.

It was their first scene.

And it's Jay's big monologue.

And it's really the first moment in the movie where you start to feel like Jay Hernandez is a human being.

He's kind of dropped the frat boy, you know, routine.

And he's not making fun of people or trying to be cool or tough.

And he's telling this story about how he could have saved this girl.

And the story is really about how helpless he feels about the situation.

That there's this guy that's disappeared.

And he's essentially telling Josh that he doesn't know what to do.

This guy's this great extra.

I love that guy's face, you know, watching them go by.

And, you know, you start to feel that Paxton, you know, has a human side to him.

And he feels kind of helpless about what's happening.

And, you know, they're looking around, but they really don't know what to do.

And here's the bubblegum gang.

And showed up demanding their bubblegum.

And they're trying not to crack up.

There was one kid that kept laughing.

And we actually had to throw him off the set.

And I felt bad doing it.

But I was a camp counselor for many years.

And I had, like, ten, eleven-year-old boys as the campers.

So I know how to get, like, a group of boys to shut up.

And this one kid was, like, laughing and very publicly in front of everyone.

And I was like, you, out of here.

And I pulled him out of the shot.

And everyone else got so scared that they were going to get cut from the movie.

And I felt bad.

But, you know, it had to be done.

That sign David Boxa made, our art director.

It was, this is, that was a restaurant.

And I said, wouldn't it be so cool if you go to Museum of Torture and the tickets are chopped people's heads off.

So that's David, our art director, playing the museum guard.

And he, you know, I described to him this guillotine thing.

And he built it.

And he made up those tickets.

And that's the fun stuff for me is I love adding, you know, trying to, you know, could have just been some guard in the museum.

But it's just fun to, like, make it, okay, what can we do about this guy to make him special?

And it's like, well, if this place is going to be cheesy, then they probably have a cool ticket system.

And all that stuff was there.

There's nothing else we planted.

I mean, we put those candles there.

But that chair is there, you know, the ax in the background.

And even this guy, this statue, this executioner was there.

And the guy in the skeleton, none of this was dressed.

And that's one of the cool things about shooting in Prague is that you can show up at a location like this and it's completely finished.

And it's already lit for you, even though Milan had to definitely do things to make the lighting work.

And it was such a, it was such a tight location.

I mean, these walls are probably from the 14th century, this museum.

And then this is at the top of those stairs.

This is, this really is the exit of the Museum of Torture.

And originally this was set in an art gallery, because I find art galleries very creepy when you're by yourself.

Even though I, I love art museums.

But there is with the jacket and you can see the, the Iceland patch.

And that was this clothing company called 66 Degrees North that I love their clothes.

And when I went to Iceland in 1991, I have these vivid memories of everybody wearing these 66 Degrees North.

66 Degrees North snowsuits.

And I just wanted to get their clothes for the movie.

And they were really cool in giving them to us.

And so this is, this location here.

Jay will later come back to this when he holds up the phone and kind of sees the smokestack in the background.

But this is our museum exterior.

And those phone comps, you know, when you're shooting it, you shoot basically a blank phone and your graphics guys put it in later.

And that was Bob Kurtzman of Precinct 13.

And you know, that's such a Scott Spiegel cut cutting from the picture to the head and then zooming out and revealing that it's actually decapitated.

And this is our first time we introduced shooting at the mental hospital.

And this was a B camera shot.

I think the A camera shot was, you know, we set up the track and the pull out and panning around to reveal Yuki tied up in the chair.

But these were some terrific shots that Roman and Martin, who's DP on B camera.

You know, we were, I was in another wing of the hospital shooting, Kana getting her eye blow torched out while Roman was shooting this.

And Roman actually, he's a big strong guy.

And he had to hold those bullet cutters up and over the toe.

And they were pretty heavy.

And it was cool that he did that.

He did a great job.

And this is obviously, Kana's watching the scene of a train on television.

It's that same movie.

I mean, the idea is that they only have one movie that they run in Slovakia over and over.

And, you know, there's a bit of foreshadowing with the train, which is how she will, how she will meet her death.

So, you know, shooting this stuff, it was, it was fun shooting in a foreign country.

I loved it.

I had such a great time there.

And I love living in other cultures.

I love learning other languages.

And I liked, you know, a lot of American directors show up in Prague and they really treat the crew like they're the communists.

And they're the help and they bring in their own keys.

And I know some directors that wouldn't even talk to the chat crew.

They'd speak to their AD and then the AD would just talk to everybody.

But, you know, I really thought there were such great people.

And, you know, that's, that's not my style at all.

I like everyone to feel like we're a team, you know, sort of no matter where you're from.

And I didn't want them to think of me as one of those types of directors.

And I really went out of my way to learn the language and to thank everybody.

And, and, you know, really quickly just, just to show these guys how much respect I had for them because I had been a PA, you know, I had been that guy getting coffee.

And I remember when the director Don Scardino on an episode of Central Park West said, hey, thanks a lot.

You did a great job.

And, you know, when you're 22 that and you've worked an 18 hour day for someone that that makes a huge difference.

And I think, you know, any advice I would have to filmmakers, I mean, I guess I should start talking about that.

People ask me, how do you break into film?

What should you do?

And, and the best thing you can do is to work on sets, go and get set experience, move to New York City or move to Los Angeles or move someplace where they make movies and get coffee for people and feel what it's like to work an 18 hour day and start at the bottom and learn everything you can, because you've got to know how a set is run.

It's the most important thing.

You know, people think Tarantino just showed up on the set of Reservoir Dogs and told them what to do, but they don't know.

He made a movie called My Best Friend's Birthday, and he had been a P.A.

And he didn't just work at the video store and then show up on the set of Reservoir Dogs.

He worked as a production assistant on a lot of movies.

And he shot a feature before he shot Reservoir Dogs that he never wound up finishing.

This shot took 18 takes, by the way.

I don't know why.

And now we're back at the Slovakian disco.

And you can see it's lit by candles and there are a lot of glasses, so you feel like these guys have been drinking for a while.

Josh is going to have his weird flash with Oli and there's some sort of strange ominous sign that, again, keeping it all from Josh's point of view.

It's all about him.

It's his story.

It's what's going on in his head.

There's Jay there.

And Yana, the place Vetlana looks so beautiful, like she's in a hair commercial dancing around in slow motion.

And she's getting Jay drunk.

So, you know, watching it now you can see that the girls are slowly drugging the guys.

But, you know, at the time it just seems like they're partying and having fun.

And so just continuing on the thought of people that want to get in movies, just work on as many movie sets as you can and meet as many people as you can.

And, you know, when I went on the set of Cabin Fever, I had 10 years of production experience.

And all that stuff, you know, it pays off later.

And then when you walk on a set, you know, you know how it's run.

You know how things work.

And shooting in the Czech Republic, they really have the same system as the Americans have.

You know, I've heard in Romania and Sofia, you know, it's good, but I guess the cities aren't up to speed.

You know, like if you're shooting in Romania, someone told me that if there's a snowstorm, you have to stop shooting because they can't plow the roads fast enough.

So even if you're indoors, you know, the city can't, the city's kind of not where Prague is at.

And here's Josh, you know, stumbling back into the hostel.

And I love the way this place looked.

And, you know, all those paintings, all that stuff was on the walls.

We just put in the desk and, you know, put in the desk and the keys and kind of dressed the room.

But you walked in and it really, it really looked like this.

I mean, this is what the monastery looks like.

And I love the idea that the guys could leave, but they don't.

You know, they could get on a train, they could go to Barcelona, but they just want to fuck the girls one more time.

And that's what gets them into trouble.

That's what, you know, and that whole monologue that Paxton has to Josh saying, you know, fuck, man, this is what we're going to talk about.

When I'm in law school and you're writing your thesis, I mean, they're not girls to them.

These girls are just stories.

They're not connecting to them like human beings.

I mean, nobody in the movie is relating to each other like a human being.

You know, they just want stories from these girls.

And here's where Paxton starts to feel iced.

And I thought that, you know, Yana and Barbara were really good friends and they're really talking about him.

And I told them, I was like, you guys should really fucking say shit about him and check and don't even tell me what it is.

So the stuff they're saying, I still don't even know what it was, but they were just looking over at Jay and obviously not laughing at Jay, they were laughing at his character because we're all close friends.

But I thought that they really did a tremendous job.

And both girls, this is the last time you really, really see them looking beautiful because next time they look so fucked up, you know, like they've been strung out or out all night or God knows what happened to them.

And this is where Paxton, you know, kind of makes the lucky mistake of accidentally getting locked in the storage closet.

And here's the cab driver. He's actually sitting at a table drinking.

But when you watch it quickly enough, for some reason, people think he's a DJ.

And I thought it was a DJ booth, but it's actually not.

He's actually just sitting at a table that somehow the way we shot it made it look like it's a DJ's booth.

I love this hallway at this club, the Guru Club, where we shot.

That was, you know, one of the cool things about shooting in Prague is getting these incredible locations and the way, you know, the way that it's painted.

Like we didn't dress any of that, that that is all authentic, exactly what this place looked like, but it still had these English words like disco and stuff in there.

You'll see that around a lot in Prague, that even though if you're in the Czech Republic, they still are English language words kind of everywhere.

Certainly, certainly in the club scene, there's a lot of that.

And now is when, you know, things shift over and we've left Josh.

And this is really our first moment alone with Jay Hernandez in the movie.

You know, up to this point, it's really been Josh's story.

But now Josh passes out, and now we're going to get to see Paxton pass out.

And this was a tight -- God, it was so tough shooting this scene.

We really didn't have a lot of money, so we had to -- we put all our money into shooting days.

We shot the movie in 40 days, in seven weeks.

And, you know, you have to make every day count, and there are only certain days you have money for overtime.

And this was not one of those days, so I didn't get to shoot the reverse of the room, but I was really happy with -- you know, in context, I thought it all worked fine.

And now normally we had it where you fade out, and then we're going to see some quick flashes, and different shots of the factory, and loud booms, and then see the smokestack, and then fade into this POV around the room.

And it was Quentin in the editing room who said, "You know what? You should just fade out on Paxton and fade up on Josh, and I think that'll work as a really, really great transition."

And I didn't want people to know who it was.

I mean, I always felt, "Oh, fuck, everyone's going to know it's Josh."

But it really worked in the first test screening.

You could tell people really were surprised when the hood came off, and it was Josh.

And one of the things that I did to sort of keep that, you know, illusion -- the mystery of who is it was I used both of their breathing.

I used some of Josh's breathing, then I used some of Jay's breathing.

Like, when he's coming closer, that's Jay's breathing that you hear.

And I thought that the sound designer, Bob Beamer, did -- sound mixer Bob Beamer did such a great job of kind of changing the ambience of the room.

And Brian Best had all these great low-end drones and steam and hiss.

And this is our set.

This is our set.

And we really spent a long time designing this.

You know, I'm pretty obsessive about color and detail and texture.

And, you know, I sat down with Milan Khadema, my DP, and Franco Carboni, a production designer.

And we looked at photographs by Joel Peter Witkin, who's one of my favorite photographers.

And we watched short films by the Brothers Quay.

There's one called Street of Crocodiles that really has a texture and feel and color like this room.

And I was like, this -- I can't articulate it, but this is the mood of this room.

This is what this room feels like.

This is -- you know, it's kind of this really horrible, dark place.

And I actually, honestly, should definitely give a nod to James Wan and Lee Wan-El with Saw.

Those -- you know, I remember going to see Saw thinking, God, man, it's fun making those low-budget movies.

You know, they shot this in 18 days for less than a million dollars.

And I had a really fun time.

And it was all in one room.

And it was just so clever and so smart and really had, you know, sort of made kind of Cabot Fever in the same spirit,

that I thought, why don't I make another movie like that?

Where instead of, you know, shooting it in 24 days for a million and a half bucks,

maybe we'll make it for, you know, $4 million or $3.8 million was, I think, the first pass of the budget.

And if we shoot it in the Czech Republic, it will be like we're making a $15 million movie.

And I can have more shooting days.

And it doesn't have to look or feel cheap.

But, you know, let's just go do something down and dirty.

That'll be sick as fuck, you know.

Quentin said to me, Eli, it's not about opening weekend.

It's about that weekend 30 years from now.

That kids are -- you know, some kids having a sleepover party.

And they go, oh, fuck, man, this movie's so sick.

You got to rent this movie.

Kind of the way I, you know, would rent the Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

the original when I was a kid.

Or people still watch The Wicker Man or Rosemary's Baby or the original Exorcist, you know.

These are the movies that have stood up for over 30 years.

And hopefully hostile -- you know, hopefully 30 years from now, kids will still be renting it.

This scene was really a disturbing scene to shoot.

You know, I was the only one at the monitor when we were filming this.

This was not fun.

I mean, normally, I have, like, the biggest boner on set when we're shooting gore stuff and chainsaw stuff.

I'm, like, salivating, like, I can't wait.

But Derek was really crying.

He was really upset.

And I know Jan Vlasic tapped into some weird, dark part of himself.

I mean, he's a grandfather and, like, a very sweet guy and a Shakespearean actor.

And look at his eyes there.

I mean, he's channeling something really horrible.

He's finding some really dark side of himself that's coming out.

And the reason I cast him was because, first, he has a reputation as one of the best actors in the track of public.

But it was really his eyes that I thought, Jesus, that piercing, cold stare, that's what makes him so terrifying.

And I love that he was, you know, he was the one guy that Josh trusted.

This guy he thought he had this bonding connection with, which is exactly what he wanted.

He likes to have a connection with something that's going to die for him.

Now, Derek's really in pain there.

Jan didn't slash his Achilles tendons, but Derek, and you'll notice here, he goes through a second level of, like, horrible screaming.

And that is when the chair came down on his toe right there and just crushed it and split it open.

And Derek wasn't getting it.

And I didn't want to, you know, push him and say, you know, be tortured more.

It's kind of, you know, it almost felt bad.

But I just said to him, Derek, if you want to make this, if you don't want to do this anymore, if you want to go home, then it's up to you to make this your last take.

And he got what I was saying, which was, you know, don't hold back anymore.

Go for it.

There was a whole speech about the witch finders, the 17th century, how they tortured people that we wound up cutting.

And the idea was to show that this has been going on all throughout humanity.

And that was Howard Berger.

I mean, those beautiful feet.

Those are the feet from Kill Bill that we got.

Again, some great K&B leftovers, courtesy of Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero.

And this is a disgusting floor to crawl on.

I mean, this was real concrete.

And Derek was completely scraped up and bruised by the end of this.

And, you know, I'm very, very, very careful about actor safety.

And, you know, I want to make sure that nobody's getting hurt.

It's kind of my worst nightmare on set to have someone have some kind of accident.

So anytime there's chainsaws, you know, we have rubber props.

We rehearse everything with stunts and pads and all of that.

But still, you know, it's those little things like the concrete floor or the handcuffs or the chair that you don't really plan for that wound up kind of causing the most damage.

And after we shot that stuff, Derek was really, really shaken up.

And I think he was really, really happy.

I mean, the moments where the guys felt the most relief were after their torture scenes.

They felt like a huge weight was lifted and they were kind of -- it sort of freed them up for the rest of the movie.

And after the spa scene, because they all went right -- they, like, went right for the craft service table and they all went out for ice cream.

I mean, these guys -- the guys are worse than the girls, which is pretty funny.

So here we are back at the hostel.

If you notice, we lit it differently.

You know, but when they first walk in with Pulp Fiction, it's all bright and warm and there's lots of life.

And I just want the feeling of death and creepiness.

And, you know, that's why it's kind of dark and shadowy.

And it just has this sort of cold, austere mood to it that doesn't feel very welcoming like when they first walk in.

And I thought Milda did a great job as our desk clerk.

It's so funny, you know, after the screening, people came up to me and they were like, "Man, that's your deputy Winston."

They, like, sort of equated him with Winston.

And Quentin saw the movie.

He's like, "Man, it's so good and the acting's so good.

And that guy who played the desk clerk is fucking awesome."

And here's the move, beautiful camera move.

I'm not saying that for me.

I'm saying our grip, Ludek and Milan really, you know, I wanted to do something that would be sort of some creepy reveal.

And they, you know, the first take they did this really nice slow boom down to the chair.

And I just thought it worked so well.

And so this is, of course, you know, the callback to when they first walked in.

And when we shot this, we basically are, it takes a long, you know, it takes an hour to set up in the camera this way in this old 16th century building and working with mirrors.

So we shot Barbara and Jana one take and then switched them out and then shot these girls.

And I think it was Petra and Natalie were their names.

And they came in and then when we did the reverse, we did the reverse of the guys coming in all happy.

And then we had to change out Jay and put him in different makeup so that he looked like he'd been up all night.

And that's what's so great about working with Jay Hernandez is to talk about him.

You know, he really, you know, he really carries the movie.

And we knew that we'd need a strong actor to play Paxton and that Josh had to be someone who's sympathetic and nice and that you just believe is that nice guy that wouldn't do this.

But Paxton has to be kind of a dickhead at first, but then you really start to feel bad for him.

And you realize that he's a really nice guy.

And now all of a sudden we have shifted protagonists and Josh is dead.

And now Jay Hernandez is the main character in the story.

And that was a very clear misdirect that I, that I intentionally did.

I say that smokestack that was all done as a visual effect.

You know, I don't like computer things to look like their computer, but that's, you know, we just shot that shot and put in the smokestack later.

And that was Dave Matherly and Bob Kurtzman at Precinct 13 really did a great job.

This little kid, Dominic, I thought was terrific at getting choked.

You know, he really was comfortable working with Jay and Pavel Vakona, stunt guy rehearsed Jay throwing him down.

And this is the moment that Jay really feels like he has it in himself.

He kind of realizes for the first time that he is capable of killing somebody, that he's got it within his own, you know, with his own power to take someone's life.

And you can and that's why, you know, I was so lucky to have him in the film.

And I'm really sorry he's unable to do the commentary with us.

He's such a smart guy and really funny guy.

But he could get all of that in a look that he just realizes, oh, my God, what the fuck am I doing?

What have I become?

How can I get to this point?

And you just feel like here he's just drained.

I mean, I didn't want to make all the police evil.

I wanted him to feel like he could trust this guy.

And this guy, Miroslav, is amazing.

It was so fun as a director with when you have two actors that are this good on set, there's no direction required.

You just place the camera and let them do their thing.

And in editing the scene, you had so many different options.

I mean, there's such subtle actors like the way he says, you're so far from home.

And that was something that, you know, Chris Briggs came up with right away there on set.

And you just gave it to him and he just got it perfectly.

And he even feels bad like you just feel like he feels bad for Jay Hernandez.

But of course, he's in on it, too.

Then there's this little poodle that walks by that fucking drove me crazy.

But I wanted to digitally remove the poodle, but George Folsey wanted to keep him.

And, you know, the idea is that everything looks beautiful at first, but there's really something fucked up and horrible going on underneath the surface.

And this is one of those back alleys in Chesky Krumlov.

That washing machine, if you go there today, I guarantee that's still there.

You know, we wanted to show the most beautiful parts of the town, but also these kind of creepy back alleys.

And these extras that we got, you know, we picked them very carefully.

And you can't really see it, but one of the guys has needles.

And what are they doing in this alley?

And just the way they kind of turned and, you know, sort of looked at Jay Hernandez.

And they just see him, you just feel like you're in, you know, hostile territory.

At one signing, some woman kept coming up to me going, hostile territory.

The word hostile has two meanings.

It says hostile territory.

I was like, yeah, I know.

I got it.

That's why I called it hostile.

And she's like, hostile territory.

I'm going to go and look it up in the library.

It was very strange.

She wanted to promote the movie by looking it up in the library.

She was crazy.

Anyways, this pub, you know, this is one of those days where we had to shoot this pub scene

and the Amsterdam red light district at night.

And we had to cram it all into 12 hours.

So the red light district, I felt, really got rushed.

But this scene, for me, was the most important scene in the movie,

where you look at the girls and, like, their arms.

Like, if you rewind it a little bit, when they track in,

you'll see their arms are bruised and they have track marks.

And it took a long time to get the girls to look like this.

It took a lot of makeup to make them look this disgusting.

And this was the scene that won, you know, the role of Natalia for Barbara.

And she was originally going to come in for Vala, because she didn't want to do--

She had heard there was nudity, but Vala didn't require nudity,

so she was going to read for that.

And, you know, I had to beg her and convince her to do it

and explain why it was important.

And thank God she did, because I think she's really brilliant in this scene,

where you just feel like, I don't know, is she--

Are they lying? Is she making it up?

I think the audience knows that she's lying as soon as she says Josh is with Oli,

the king of the swing.

But, you know, Jay has to get information from them.

But, you know, he can't lose his temper.

And then they're all laughing.

And this is the moment, you know, where he starts to snap.

And she says, "All right, game over.

You want to fuck with me?

Watch this."

And she just looks him right in the eye and starts lying to him.

And he doesn't know what's going on, but he has no choice.

He has to believe her.

And, you know, this was a scene--

Normally, I didn't want to rehearse too much.

I don't like to over-rehearse things.

I did not rehearse either torture scene.

I felt, you know, these guys are good actors.

They'll get it.

I'm not worried about that.

But this was a scene we really rehearsed, you know,

because, you know, Yana doesn't speak a lot of English,

and Barbara's only been speaking English for two and a half years.

So to do a scene where there's different--

you know, where every line they're saying,

they're really saying something else.

You know, they're having a conversation about one thing,

but Jay's really going, "Are you fucking lying to me?"

And she's saying--

and she's giving him all these answers,

but she's saying, "I'm going to give you the--

you know, spoon-feed you the biggest crock of shit,

and let's see if you swallow it."

And then he finally calls her bluff, and she's like,

"All right, fine. You want to go?"

And I think that they're delaying him

because probably at the factory, you know,

there's some other kills scheduled,

and he's not slated for, like, maybe 8 o'clock tonight.

But he wants to go there early. Fine.

And that's where they just turn off.

And I love how she just really--

you know, if you think of the way Barbara played the character

from The Spa, where she's so warm and friendly,

and you just love her, and you're so happy these guys met these girls,

and now she's just ice cold.

And we even made her fingernails dirty,

and why does she have all this money in her wallet?

Like, what the fuck is going on?

And here's the bubble gum, which we set up, which, of course, we pay off later.

I don't know. I always ask for gum, and I like the idea that people like to have bags of gum around.

And, you know, it's tough shooting scenes in the car.

There's not really too many options of where you can put the camera.

So we just wanted to make the scene as simple as possible.

And I love the way she says, "Ah, we are here," and gives them this look.

And this kind of-- you know, that scene in Schindler's List where they get off the train and they're at Auschwitz always freaked me out.

And, you know, I wanted to obviously do something with burning bodies.

And I remember, you know, you see the ash coming out of the chimney,

and, you know, it's humans being burned there.

And I like the chimney motif.

I don't know what my psychoanalyst father will think about that playing into the movie.

But, you know, you start to see the factories and the chimneys.

And I like that this is some kind of post-industrial wasteland.

And that, you know, Slovakia is beautiful and mountainous and has hot springs.

But in the Czech Republic, you know, there are a lot of areas where there were these factories

and the government, you know, the communist government ended, and now they're just rotting.

And there are strange things that pop up, you know, in a culture where, you know, now the dollar rules.

And you feel like that this is a place where, you know, someone could go--

If anyone watching this movie wants to go and buy that factory, they can.

It's for sale. Nobody owns it. They haven't torn it down. It's just sitting there.

Actually, no, this person does own it.

That, you know, she kind of lives there on the property, which is weird.

And there's Takashi Miike, who is just, you know, a hero of mine.

You know, ever since-- once I finished Cabin Fever, I started going around the world to different film festivals.

And I saw Miike's movies, Audition, and Ichi the Killer, and particularly this film, Visitor Q, I really, really love.

And I love the fact that he makes, like, six movies a year.

You know, I feel like I spend forever doing stuff.

And Miike is like a machine, and he says, you know, I don't call myself an artist.

I get, you know, afraid of anyone who does, and I'm just here to direct work.

Like, he's really the most unpretentious, sweet guy you'll ever meet.

And he flew nine hours from Prague to do that cameo, which was unbelievable.

It was so cool of him to do that.

And this shed we built, we kind of art directed that.

Everything else is exactly as is.

And, you know, I like that there's this entrance guard.

And the music he's listening to is the music that A-Thor and Barbara were singing earlier in the spa,

the Ochi Chorna, that old Russian song.

This shot here was shot from that beam that's way in the background, this overhead POV.

And when I scouted it, you know, we came up in a location, and I saw that shot.

And I was like, we have to shoot here.

And I took photographs.

And that was, you know, I believed so much in this movie that I spent my own money going

to the Czech Republic and scouting, and I came back, and I came back to L.A.,

and I showed photographs to Clint Culpepper, who's the head of Screen Gems.

And I said, this is where I'm going to shoot the factory, and we're going to go from this,

and you can start to see, you know, this is where the movie takes another tonal shift.

I mean, it's really, you know, after Josh is dead, it's this gray, bleak, ashen world.

And Paxton could escape at any time.

You know, he's the one who demands to be taken here.

Nobody kidnapped him.

If he knew it was good for him, he would have left after Oli disappeared.

But he didn't.

He's, you know, he's that arrogant, pushy American.

He's got to know what happened.

He's got to get his way.

And he walks right into the trap, and the girls know that he's going to do it.

They knew exactly how to play him.

And I love that he thinks that he's, you know, they've got the advantage over these girls.

Oh, we're American.

They're going to fuck us because we're American, and we have all this money, and they'll love us.

And they get pimped out.

She says, I got money for you.

That makes you my bitch.

And here we are in the basement of the mental hospital.

And it's, God, it was creepy as fuck shooting this.

It was pretty dirty down there.

I think we dirtied down the walls a little.

And this was actually shot on the stage.

And this was a long makeup appliance.

It took a long time, about five hours, to get Derek into that with his arm peeled open and his chest.

And I think the first time Derek saw it, he was really, really freaked out.

And here's the moment where you get to see the Dutch businessman acting out of surgery.

And this shot of Jay, we didn't really have a good reaction.

So we took a shot of him walking towards Natalia, blew it up, flipped it, and put it in reverse.

And that's just one of those tricks in the editing room where we needed a reaction of Jay and thought,

"Oh, fuck, we're going to have to reshoot that, shoot an insert on the stage."

And it was this take.

It was like an alternate take of this shot where we just took it, flipped it, put it backwards, and it just worked.

And that's one of the cool things you can do in film editing, is you can take moments that you don't have,

or someone's reaction, or someone's look, and the end of a take you don't even use.

And all of a sudden, it's like one of the big, main reactions in the film.

And here's where the camera work, if you think of the beginning, it was so controlled and so bright.

Think of Amsterdam. It was such a safe place.

And here it's hand-held, and it's dark, and it's all from his point of view.

And he starts to see what's going on in the same way that Josh walked up and down the hallway

and looked into all those different rooms.

Now Jay Hernandez, you know, Paxson has that experience.

There's the Ram Man song of "Get Gun."

If you go frame by frame, you'll see that's Chris Briggs crunching the nuts of Bill Schultz,

writer for Stuff Magazine.

And this was a really, really fun scene, both to edit and to sound design.

And we had so many different options.

Roman, who shot our second unit, he was my first assistant director and was my second unit director.

You know, the more stuff he shot, the more I gave him to shoot.

I was like, "Dude, just get some shots running by, hand-held."

And he just went to town, and all the blood and the slitting the throat, and he kept coming up with stuff.

And, you know, I like that.

I like to encourage people to come up with things.

You know, it's definitely my movie and it's my vision and all that, but filmmaking is a collaborative medium.

And you have to surround yourself with good people who are going to contribute good ideas

because they're going to make you look better.

They're going to make the film look better.

And it's not about getting credit or having everybody know you came up with every idea.

It's about making a great -- of something you're proud of, that you feel is a great piece of entertainment,

something that works as a whole.

I mean, that's -- you notice at the beginning, you know, I don't take the -- it doesn't say a film by Eli Roth or an Eli Roth film.

I don't do that. It just says written and directed by.

And I know that in, you know, maybe some of the marketing, they write Eli Roth's Hostel.

But you notice that none of that is actually on the film.

You know, there's this whole debate about do you have a film by so-and-so.

And you know what, my feeling is that you should be able to tell it's a film by so-and-so just from watching the movie.

You shouldn't need a credit to explain it.

And it's a collaborative medium.

You know, so many people -- I mean, I'm watching the shot right now and I think,

okay, yeah, there's Franco's production design and David's art direction and, you know, Franco's costume design

and the wardrobe supervision that Yitka did and the way Milan shot it

and the way Pete Conrad was the gaffer and did the lighting

and the way Brian Best did the sound design

and the way Bob Beamer and Tatum Cullhut mixed the sound and the dialogue

and the way Nate Barr did the music

and the way Jay performed the role

and the way George Folsey edited it.

So, you know, there's so many different things that went into just that one shot

that I'm looking at right now that how can I say it was just me doing it?

You can't.

It's -- everyone is working towards a single unified vision.

We're all working towards the same thing.

But, you know, you need a lot of different people to do it.

And I just feel like if I say, oh, it's an Eli Roth film, you know,

it just kind of says, you know, fuck you to all the people that worked really hard on it.

It's -- it's -- yeah, okay, fine.

People know it's my film because I directed it.

That should be enough.

This scene was tough to direct.

This actor, Peter, who played the German surgeon, was nervous

and, you know, I don't think he had total control of the tools.

That said, I think he did a brilliant job.

And he's a nice guy, but it was really -- it was, you know, it was crazy shooting.

We had to have a stunt guy basically use the tools.

Not because Peter was wild with them, but he just wouldn't hit his marks the same way.

You know, he's a writer and a theater actor.

And in film, it's very difficult.

You know, you have to stand in this exact position, hit the light, hold your arm this way.

And he kind of wasn't used to doing that.

So when he's, like, swinging the claw, for example, he almost took out a focus puller's eye,

and we just figured it would be safer to have a stunt person doing it off camera.

That said, I would still work with him again in a heartbeat.

I just wouldn't put lots of sharp tools in his hands.

I thought, you know, his eyes made it in the audition.

He was so scary in the way he was breathing and sucking the mask in and out.

And it's really satisfying to write a scene like this and then see it played out before you.

And here's our moment where Jay speaks German.

And, of course, it's not subtitled, nor is it translated, nor will I ever subtitle or translate it.

So you can either learn German, figure it out, or just watch it and enjoy the moment.

And, you know, we tried subtitles when I first watched it.

And all of a sudden, it felt like you were in a movie.

You weren't in a scene.

And, yeah, we know it's a movie, but the subtitles just reminded you that you were in a movie.

And it was weird to introduce subtitles, like, an hour into the film.

If it was something that we had been doing from the beginning of the film, people would have gone with it.

But to do it at this point I thought was a real mistake.

And I like preserving the mystery of what he said to him.

And, you know, this was one of those shots that, you know, we're on a set and it was still pretty tight in this room.

You know, we felt we could kind of achieve everything in one shot.

And, you know, I was really happy with my DP, Milan Khadima.

It's his first movie that he shot as the lead DP.

He had shot second unit on Brothers Grimm and Doom.

And I figured, you know, well, this guy's good enough for Terry Gilliam.

He's good enough for me.

But he'd shot a lot of commercials on his own and he's a tremendous camera operator.

And, you know, I'm a really enthusiastic guy and I'm excited to be there.

This is all I ever wanted to do and I want to make every minute count.

And every shoot day I don't want it to end.

Even though I want to work efficiently and get it done in like 11 or 12 hours, you know, I'm sad at the end of the day.

I just love it so much.

And Milan is like that with the camera.

You know, he just wants to shoot.

And he, you know, he operates even on like when Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe shot in the Czech Republic, they'd have Milan operate.

You know, he's just like the top operator.

And so, but he's kind of never got his chance to DP, to be a star in a movie.

And I think he did such a brilliant job, but it's so great to have someone that every shot they want to make it count.

You know, it's like, you know, we saw the movie the exact same way, the same colors, like the color of this room, the grays and the greens and the textures and, you know, how we wanted to use the photography to tell the story, but not be like completely taken out of it.

By like, oh, wow, look at that shot.

Just you're, you're kind of in the moment.

And, you know, in moments like this, where he puts it down and he has to go up and grab it.

A lot of this, we just, it was so tight.

I think we tried to get 63 shots in one day and we wound up getting about 60 of them.

It was, this, this whole scene is all like tiny little inserts.

So a lot of time, you know, what you call running and gunning, which is like point the camera, shoot, point the camera, shoot.

But Milan is one of those guys who just wants to make every single shot count.

And, you know, and this is Roman, our DP, you know, he would go back and do the inserts.

And, you know, we had to shoot 30 different takes of the fingers landing just to get it exactly right.

But we started to change the style of the photographer here, going a little more handheld and the camera gets a little more loose.

And, you know, the POV running in.

And this is a big scene to shoot.

I'm actually shaking the leg.

You know, we have a dummy and I'm at the other end of the foot.

I want it to be right there.

And I remember everyone in the crew was covered in plastic.

And I was like, you guys, such pussies.

I was saying that because they're all really tough.

They just didn't want to get their clothes dirty.

But I loved it.

I love getting covered head to toe in fake blood.

You know, I feel like if I'm not covered in blood at the end of the day, then I haven't done my job as a horror movie director.

And this was a live chainsaw.

And this fucking stunt guy got close to this thing, man.

And this was one of those things where our props guys kind of rigged the chainsaw so it actually kind of ran even faster.

So that it would, you know, be like, and then hit the ground and spark like that.

And this guy just crawled towards it and crawled towards it.

And his fingers were inches from the blade.

And that thing was really jumping around.

And it was a mess.

I mean, you can see what that looked like.

It was about as fun.

It was about as disgusting to lie in and be in as it looks.

And Jay did a great job.

He did his own stunts.

And, of course, here they're watching Sex Fever, the cabin fever porn.

And that was given to me by Chloe, who directed the movie.

And Larry Flint let us use it.

The Larry Flint Publications owns the film.

And this is one of those scenes where we had 15 different shots and we just had to get him shooting the guy.

And I had a whole thing about how he discovered that you're out of bullets.

Like, you can only get two bullets and then that's all you get in the room.

And that's why he kind of throws the gun down.

But I really thought that, like, Franco and Milan did a great job of making this feel very different from Josh's room.

Josh's room had that bluish feel and the radiator and the steam.

And it was still the same set that we just kind of redressed while we were shooting on the train.

They're redressing the set and moving the walls around a little bit.

But it really feels like it's another room in a different part of the factory.

And there's that mask, my favorite mask, the ram's horn mask, which I got at the end of the shoot because I really wanted it.

I mean, this is one of those things where, yeah, I guess he could have hidden.

I guess he could have gone out.

We didn't really need to have it, but I just thought the imagery was so weird and creepy.

And, you know, I feel like there is somebody in that place who would want to do some weird fetishistic thing with a mask.

And it's all about how you'd want to act out your fantasy and you can get to be this character of the ram man.

But then these guys come down the hall and, you know, Paxton figures there's no way he's going to confront them.

And this room, I mean, this was actually the room at the mental hospital.

You know, this was not a set.

It was really, really tough to move a camera around and to light it and shoot it in there.

And we just dressed the hell out of it.

You know, we were kind of running around from one room, grabbing all the props from the torture room, putting it in here.

And then we got, okay, do a shot here, grab it.

You know, we were low budget, so we just had to kind of make every dollar stretch.

And so, you know, just using the same props over and over, just kind of redecorating them from room to room.

And this guy, Yosef, came in to read for The Butcher.

And originally it was just going to be this extra part.

It was a much smaller part.

But, you know, he was so fantastic.

And just the way he looked, you know, I had to make him more of a featured role.

And I just thought that's one of the fun things about shooting The Czech Republic is getting to discover actors like this.

I mean, people, you know, that's a real hump.

He really walks like that.

He walks at that speed.

That's the look on his face all the time.

He's a very sweet guy.

But that's who he is.

And, you know, it was just fun finding guys like that and putting them in the movie.

And there's Kuba, who's our PA, Una Kuba.

I talk about him on the producer's commentary.

And across the hall you can see another chair in another room.

And, you know, there's a whole system here.

You know, I sat down and I drew out the factory and I said, okay, at the basement level,

that's where the bodies get burned and the ash goes in the chimney.

But they also, the butcher chops up the bodies and he throws them in the furnace.

And the cleaner guys go around and they clean the place.

I mean, that was one thing that Quentin was really obsessed with, was the minutiae of how this place works and what happens.

And how do you go there and how do you get to choose?

And, you know, it was something that I kind of wanted to explore more in the script.

But I felt like we all had to have kind of that logic all figured out of, you know, this place.

And, you know, I just thought about this place in Thailand and that, God, is it real?

Can you really go there and walk and just shoot somebody in the head?

Is that possible?

And is there a place where you can pay to murder someone?

And I just feel like, you know, if you connect, if you contacted, you know, the right, wrong people, as Harry Knowles calls them, you can, you can do anything.

And, you know, here's Derek, Josh, and this is kind of the final goodbye between the two guys.

And here's some body parts from Land of the Dead, some dummies and all this pork that Kevin Wassner from KMBFX got.

And this room is really like that.

I mean, this kitchen was where they chopped up the bodies, the body of the animals to feed the hospital.

It doesn't work anymore, but they have these casters and meat hooks.

And this is from 1910.

And, you know, Kevin did such really nice touches.

You can see his chest has been sewn up and even his mouth has been sewn up.

And I thought Derek did a really great job with this kind of dead stare looking at Jane.

It's this horrible final moment, this weird farewell between the two friends.

And, you know, you think of where they were an hour ago at the coffee shop and the problems they were having meeting girls and getting into fights.

And, you know, they've really gone on this horrible descent into hell.

And what we call this whole sequence, the trolley of death sequence.

That's what Howard Berger from KMBFX called it.

I mean, in Europe, we call it a cart, a cart of death, but they use the word trolley over there.

And this was the trolley of death.

And, of course, this was Scott Spiegel's idea that he loses his fingers and the guy comes in and picks them up.

And it's one of those things we had to shoot quickly.

And I feel like, you know, I didn't get to really cover the scene the way I wanted to to make it clear that the butcher is the one who leans down and picks up.

I mean, you can see it projected.

You can see that that's his silver glove.

But I still think that in watching the movie, people felt like Jay Hernandez picked up his own fingers again.

So what can you do?

I'm still happy with how, you know, everything turned out.

All things considered, I thought we were doing all right.

You know, this movie, I wanted a red meat movie.

I wanted a lot of carnage and body parts.

And it's just funny what people's expectations are.

You know, I think, you know, people's enjoyment of a movie is directly related to what they think it's going to be.

And, you know, some people at the test screenings in L.A. heard that it was the goriest movie ever made.

And they were disappointed.

They're like, you know, some kid in a Cannibal Holocaust T-shirt's like, that sucked.

I thought it was going to be way gorier.

And other people heard that it was going to be, like, scary like Exorcism of Emily Rose.

And they were freaked out.

At the Toronto Film Festival at the very first screening, we had two medical emergencies.

They had, they called two ambulances.

Some guy during Josh's torture left the theater, the varsity theater, and he fainted on the escalator.

And then some woman, like 15 minutes later, she left because she thought she was having a heart attack.

And, you know, I, of course, came out and all the festival volunteers said, oh, my God, you missed it.

There were two ambulances.

It was such chaos.

And I said, well, what happened?

They said, you know, these people fainted.

And I said, are they okay?

They said, yeah, they're fine.

And I went, damn it.

I wanted them to die.

Like, we could have had two deaths.

Man, Passion of the Christ had a death.

I want to get a death, too.

I mean, eventually I'll get my own.

But I figured, you know, if you get a death from a movie, that's like, that's kind of cool.

I mean, it's not cool that someone died.

I mean, it's really sad, actually.

You know, because then they couldn't buy the DVD.

Anyway, so here we are in the changing room.

And the changing room here, this originally, you know, the idea was that they were going to walk in and this is the locker room.

And when I first saw the set, I threw a fit because the furniture was way too nice and it felt out of place.

So Carol, our props guy, kind of the last night, like, just went and got all this stuff and sort of the last minute put this locker room together.

He worked with Franco to do it.

And I really thought they did a magnificent job.

You know, overall, I was just so happy with the way that the sets turned out.

And this is a room at the mental hospital.

And, you know, it's funny because, like, right next to it is Alex's room.

And right next to it is the interior of the subway car where Jay Hernandez holds the knife later, right before the ending.

And here's where he sees the gloves.

And this cut here, this is where my brother Gabe begged me to do this shot.

He's like, "Man, you should just do a shot of him putting on a glove."

And we actually did a shot where later he takes a blowtorch that was used on Kana and cauterizes his wound.

But it just felt like, okay, you know what, this is like something out of a movie.

Nobody would really do this.

If he had it wrapped up and he put the glove on, you know, he'd just want to get the fuck out of there and take care of it later.

And this was a thing where we couldn't even have time to shoot the shot where the guy walks in and sees them.

But you kind of get it.

He gets on the walkie.

And, you know, now he's putting on the coat.

And this is where he finds the card and sees the different levels of prices.

And the tattoo, the logo of the bloodhound.

And we see just what the price of life is.

I mean, for me, this movie is very much about the price of life.

You know, the hooker, her life is worth 100 euros an hour.

And, you know, Jay Hernandez, the American, here was $25,000.

And at the end, you know, your life is just a piece of bubble gum.

Just to these, you know, to these little kids.

So this scene was such a fun scene to shoot.

I was really kind of nervous, actually.

I was concerned that we wouldn't, you know, I was concerned we wouldn't have enough time to shoot it.

Because it was one of the last days of shooting.

But Rick Hoffman showed up and he was so good that we really kind of got everything on the first take.

And just the way the pan worked over that he walked when he kept talking, we could keep him in frame and keep Jay on the left and Rick on the right.

You kind of can't tell that stuff until you get on set.

I mean, we knew what shots we needed and what coverage we wanted.

But we could just let him walk back and really could almost kind of play the entire scene this way.

And, you know, that was just sort of me in Milan, you know, getting on there with an actor and sort of walking through it and blocking it out.

And, you know, when we're shooting, I hate blocking in rehearsal.

I mean, I wish I could do it all day because you have the shot in your head.

You show up at the location.

You get the costumes, set the actors, and then you can't quite get the frame right.

And it fucking kills you.

The lockers are in the wrong place.

Or that bench is weird.

Or it doesn't look like you had it in your head.

And you have to get the right light.

You've got to find them in the right position.

And it takes time to do that.

And that's the one thing you don't have in a low-budget horror movie is time.

And that's one thing you never have in a movie is time.

You know, you want to be able to frame everything the way Stanley Kubrick does.

But, you know, he'll spend, you know, seven years getting one take.

And here we reestablish the gun of where he gets the gun.

And I love just how giddy Rick Hoffman is.

Like, he goes from this thing of playing, like, just excitement of, like, a little kid on Christmas.

Like, he can't wait to try this thing out.

He's so happy about it.

But then he, like, gets mad at him.

And he gets psycho.

And you realize how manic this guy is that this guy is fucking psychotic.

And he could just take the gun and he could just shoot him.

Like, you know, when he says, "How did you do it?"

Like, he just wants to know so bad.

And he's almost smiling.

Like, he's expecting Jay to tell him, like, a really exciting story.

And then he just kind of turns.

And that's all that stuff that Rick really brought to the role.

You know, he just...

Like, all this kind of manic, nervous energy.

You know, there were so many different ways to go with this.

And, you know, when I saw Rick in Cellular, it was Chris Briggs who brought him in.

And he came over.

And, you know, we'd been shooting for 36 days already when he came on set.

And he just fit in perfectly with everybody.

And it's great that a lot of people come out of the movie and they say the thing that disturbed me most is that scene with Rick Hoffman, the American businessman.

I mean, you know, I think he's going to be one of these guys that, like Christopher Walken over the years, can come into a movie, walk in and steal the movie.

You notice I put people walking down the stairs and in the background.

And every time, you know, Jay is walking, there's always someone there just so you feel like, you know, at any second he could get caught.

And this was a very conscious shift in the photography.

You know, in Amsterdam it was controlled.

It was steady cam.

It was colorful.

Here, you know, Milan.

This is Milan running around.

You know, I think we did a track here just to get him out of the factory.

But, like, running behind him.

And when I went and scouted the location, you know, I had the scene in my head.

And, you know, when I went to the location, it was my AD, Mark Taylor, who was our first AD.

He was British.

You have a first AD that's British and a first AD that's Czech who was Roman.

So Czech can deal -- you know, Roman can deal with talking to the crew and there's just translation issues you don't have to worry about.

But, you know, Mark was the one who really, really made me rehearse it.

And block it out.

And what shots are you going to do?

And, you know, I have the shots in my head.

But a lot of the times I don't want to overthink stuff.

I like to get there and kind of be inspired.

But you can't really do that.

So, you know, we would go to the location, we'd walk through and it's like, okay, this is one shot here and this is one shot there.

And, you know, everything is mapped out.

I mean, by the time you show up -- you know, before we'd shoot, like the night before, we'd go to the location and block everything through.

But, you know, we knew we were going to have the camera here.

And I love this -- like he's going into hell and he's running shots.

And actually, Milan ran into the wall and really hurt himself doing one of these shots.

So it was a little scary.

But when I first went down there, it felt like that Blair Witch, like running through that Blair Witch house, this dark, horrible place where something awful is on the other side.

And now it's kind of a -- you know, we see the callback to earlier when Josh is in the brothel and he walks in and interrupts the dominatrix.

And here's Jennifer Lim in her big scene, the eye-gasm scene.

This is a scene where, you know, whenever you're doing a big effects scene like this, you always are nervous and excited and everyone's taking pictures.

But you've got to get that shot.

And that's one of the scary things about shooting film and why I'd like to try shooting a movie HD is because when you shot this eye-gasm, it's like a four-hour setup.

And you've got to get it right and it's got to look perfect.

And, you know, what if it's overexposed or what if the film jams in the camera?

You don't know until the next day when you see those dailies.

And so you feel like you shoot and you've done a really good job and you're just holding your breath to see if everything is in focus.

And, look, you know, we have great people, so you generally know that it is.

But you're shooting in low light and they're moving around and, you know, mistakes happen and not everything goes as planned.

But when we saw the dailies on this one, I thought, oh, my God, this is so great.

And then I thought, well, it's fun while it lasts, but the ratings board is going to make me cut this.

And I remember showing this at the Toronto Film Festival in audience.

People went fucking crazy.

And they just said, how are you going to pop?

How are you possibly going to keep the eye-gasm in there?

And amazingly, the ratings board let it stick.

They let it stay.

And we added in extra footage here so it would be unrated.

We wound up putting in extra stuff for you guys for the special unrated edition.

I mean, it was weird.

Like, I shot all this extra gore thinking they'd ask me, like, the close-up of Josh's chest ripped open during surgery.

Thinking they'd ask me to cut.

I was certain they would ask me to cut it and they didn't.

And then, you know, Sony Home Video was like, oh, do you have extra stuff for the unrated DVD?

And I was like, haha, yeah, sure.

So, you know, here we're back more in that handheld mode.

And this was one of these things where it was fast and furious.

And it was rushed while we were filming it.

We had to film all of the stuff at the factory in two days.

You know, him walking in, his entrance, the whole thing in the entrance, and then the whole escape.

And, you know, we wound up using a lot of crew members.

This guy with the glasses, one of our on-set dressers, rad on.

And, you know, you just wind up shooting fast and quick at a camera there and point and wave it fast.

And, you know, with the B camera shooting this stuff and A camera, you know.

Miraculously, it all kind of came together.

You know, somehow the sort of frantic energy of it all kind of worked out.

And I just felt really lucky that I had the crew that I did.

I mean, you can't do anything without a good crew.

You have to have a crew that is really going to fight for you.

Because if you treat them like shit or they're bored or, you know, they don't respect you, then you're in trouble.

No matter how much you're paying them, you know, the only way you can get this kind of work done

is if you have a crew that's great and that respects you.

And that all comes from the top.

It's got to be the directors and the producers treating the crew well.

Because, you know, if you treat them well, they're going to take care of you.

And I had such a great experience shooting the Czech Republic.

I would go back there in a heartbeat.

This van, for example, belonged to our stuntman, Pavel Vakon.

We were supposed to shoot another location in the night before the location fell through.

So we thought, okay, fuck, we've got to do this intersection now.

There was a stoplight now.

What's going to block it?

We can't put scaffolding.

And then we thought, what if we use the van?

And it just reveals the girls.

And I thought they did a great job of, you know, arguing here.

And then Alex kind of comes out and you realize that he's been in on it.

This poor kid, Lubomir.

I mean, the first day of shooting, we shot this.

We shot the photographs for his camera.

So he kind of showed up thinking it was a normal movie.

And there are these three naked, you know, porn actresses.

And he's got to get in there in the middle.

And he's a real serious trained actor.

And he understood it.

But I think he thought, what the fuck have I gotten myself into?

But thankfully, he stuck it out.

And I thought he did an amazing job as Alex.

You know, really, really, really creepy with those eyes.

And then this gets the biggest applause in the movie.

And I, you know, a barber did a great job of getting everyone to fucking hate her.

And look at the kids.

You can see them.

They're like kind of playing soccer when he shows up.

And I had to cut away because the kids started laughing.

But a lot of this stuff where you see the close-up of Patrick,

he looks like he's a great actor.

But we just kind of filmed the camera and got him looking around.

You know, he was terrific.

Like, he could show up and kind of give Jay that stare.

And then when he's blowing the bubble gum here.

And, you know, this is a great edit that George Folsey did.

You know, he had him looking off camera.

That was just a coincidence that we then put the sound effect of the car coming in.

And it really, in editing, makes it look like, yeah, he saw that car coming.

And he said, now we mean business.

And when he looks up, that was just him looking around, kind of not paying attention.

But the way George edited it, he kind of gives his buddy the high sign to start throwing the bricks.

You know, that's something that was not in the script.

But it's just like we took that look and cut it together with that.

And next thing you know, he's looking at his friend.

And then all the kids go crazy.

We set up three cameras to film this.

We have the high camera, this low camera here, and then a third camera.

Oh, then that head crush.

That was Dave Madley at Precinct 13 adding that CG.

And that's where I think computer effects can really be great.

And then, of course, he hands his buddy the gum.

And it says, good boy.

Now, the roadblock here.

You know, I just like the idea that it's just one obstacle after another.

That just when he thinks he gets out of the factory, you know, he's got the girls, and he gets by the girls, and he's going to get by the thugs.

And, you know, this roadblock scene was a tough scene.

I think Jay was really sick that day, and Milan was sick.

And, you know, I like the idea that, like, some guy's arguing about something, and if the police are going to beat the shit out of this random guy, then imagine what they're going to do when they get a hold of Jay Hernandez, who they're presumably actually looking for.

And, you know, it's not like that in Slovakia.

You know, Slovakia's a nice place, and people are really friendly.

But kind of in my movie Slovakia, the police are evil, and that's what it's like.

And then again, like, this is our prop guy letting us use that truck.

And this guy's a terrific actor.

His name is also Miroslav as well, and he's really close friends with the guy who plays the police officer who, you know, Paxton goes to for help, who says, "You're so far from home."

The two of them work in the theater together, and you can actually see him in that police station.

You know, we had a moment with him and the other cop that got cut out that we put in a deleted scene.

And, you know, here we are shooting at the train station, and we had to set up all these different obstacles and, you know, make it believable

that they could actually get by without people noticing that there was a girl with half her face missing.

And, you know, it was such a pleasure working with Jay and Jennifer Lim.

I mean, they're always so on it. They're in character. They're psyched to be there.

And, you know, they really did a good job of acting without having to speak.

I mean, one of the things I realized in, you know, we had to do the dubbing translation of the movie and, you know, looking over the script is that there really isn't a lot of dialogue in the last 30 minutes of the movie.

You know, after Jay gets tortured and he escapes, after the American businessman, there really isn't much talking.

And it's very difficult for actors to do that, to convey all that emotion in just a look.

And there are a few other things I want to talk about. I want to talk a little bit about what happens after you shoot the movie.

You know, we went back and we edited the movie and then there's this weird process called testing and it's fucked up.

There's this, that I talk about a little bit with George Folsey, where obviously the audience determines what your movie, you know, how your movie's going to play.

You know, you're making the movie for them. So you want to sit with the audience and feel what they're going through.

And we had a first test screening and everybody went fucking crazy and they were applauding, but the scores were low.

And everything gets scored. They say, would you, how was this actor? How was that actor?

Was it very good, good, very good, excellent, fair, poor. And it's like, if they want 75%, either very good or excellent.

And if you've made an effective horror movie, at the end, people feel like shit.

So they're not going to write excellent. You know, if you made cheaper by the dozen, it's a 95.

But, you know, I think Cab of Fever got a 19. It was the lowest testing movie in the history of Lionsgate.

And, you know, Hostel scored low at first, but we knew that the movie worked.

So we knew that the problem was in the ending, but what happens is they have these stupid fucking scorecards and people fill out.

You're asking someone to play God and criticize. And then you start getting these notes from the studio.

And they're like, oh, people don't find it scary enough. People don't find it this. People don't find it that.

And I'm like, no, one person out of 300 wrote that. And all of a sudden, it's like the filmmaker's opinion becomes completely irrelevant.

And it's really fucked up. And I think that if this movie does well, my goal as a director is to get testing eliminated from my movies.

And I know some directors that have it. You know, I talked to Quentin and he'll show his movies to audiences.

And he's at the position where nobody fills out scorecards. He's like, I just want to feel how the audience feels.

You know, just sit in a room with them and feel them. And I know, you know, the South Park guys will show it to friends, but they don't do scorecards and stuff.

And you have to be a successful enough director. So I don't care about Final Cut and all that stuff.

You know, what matters to me is that I don't have tested and focus groups.

You know, they have a focus group of 20 people. And there's one person going in a, you know, in a Fulci Lives t-shirt going,

"There wasn't enough gore. There wasn't enough gore." And another person's going, "Amsterdam's boring. Make it scarier."

And I'm like, the whole point of Amsterdam was that it's supposed to be fun, that I didn't want the movie to be scary for minute one.

I want you to feel like you're on a journey with these guys and you're going on a trip to hell with the guys.

And, you know, people say, "Oh, they think it's too slow." It's like, "Well, I want it to be slow."

Because, you know, it's a slow burn movie, but they're still laughing. They're still applauding.

You know, the highest compliment you can give a horror movie, if it really works, if it's really fucking scary, is people say, "Don't see it."

Because they know that some people can't handle it. And then I remember in the focus group, they have 20 people and they say,

"Would you recommend it?" And only like half the hands went up. And everyone started freaking out.

And I said, "No." Ask them, "Would you recommend it to a horror fan?"

And they said, "Would you recommend it to a horror fan?" And they said, "Every hand went up."

So, like, the things that work about horror movies, which is that they're repulsive, they horrify you,

you feel like you had your ass kicked at the end of them, they're terrifying, you can't sleep at night, you tell people not to see it.

That's like, that's what makes a horror movie great. That's what makes it a classic. That cannot be quantified on a scorecard.

Now, if people aren't scared, that's when you're in trouble. And I'm not saying you shouldn't show your movies to audiences, but all of a sudden, everything becomes about numbers.

And it's the death of movies. Everyone says, "Why is every movie the same?" Well, they're all fucking tested.

And then people say, "Oh, it's got to play to a wider audience, so take out the offensive stuff, take out the offensive things."

And I gotta say, Clint Culpepper, the head of Screen Gems and everyone at Lionsgate, they knew exactly what this movie was and they never once tried to tone this movie down.

So, you know, Clint read the script, and he knew this movie was fucking hardcore, and we shot it hardcore, and he said, "We can't try and make this movie safe."

And even some other people told him, he said, "Well, what if you toned it down?" And Clint said, "Fuck that. That's what makes the movie great, is how sick and violent and extreme it is."

And the people at Lionsgate really embraced that, too, and they know how to sell that, and they understand that, and that's why they partnered to release the movie together.

So, you know, even though we tested the movie and it went through this process, it was, you know, we wound up shooting an ending, we got a better, you know, I think this ending works much better.

You know, audiences wanna see this fucking guy get it, and I love this. This ending I had enough time to do. I spent two days shooting this.

I set up an A stage and a B stage, where one was these, like, that was on the B stage, that was on the A stage.

I wrote out every single shot. I said, "We're gonna get 74 shots in two days," and we did it. We got every shot we wanted.

And it came out exactly the way I wanted to shoot it, 'cause I had the time and, you know, worked really well with audiences, and I was really proud of it.

And yeah, it's straightforward, and it's not the original ending that I had, but, you know, it's clear what audiences wanna see.

And that's the moment for me, when he sees the reflection and realizes who's doing this to him, and it's the payback for Josh.

You know, that's what makes it all worth it. But, you know, I have to say that, like, the testing, it's the fucking death of movies.

It's so sad, because the studios say, "We will not release your movie theatrically unless you get above, you know, a 40 or a 50."

It's just a rule they have, because, say a studio--and I understand it. I mean, I'm not saying they're evil.

I just--it's a business that you're a studio, and you make 15 movies, but you only have slots to release eight of them.

I'm just saying, for example, hypothetically. Well, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna put the movie that tested a 19, or are you gonna do the one that tested an 80?

Because, honestly, generally, the movies that test higher make more money.

So, you know, that's what they're about. You know, they wanna try and make great movies, but there's no room for that anymore.

It's like, even if you make an independent film, it's not gonna get released in the theatres unless it gets certain scores.

And you've gotta accept that until you're at the point where you're a name director, and you've done it, like, you know, like Quentin, or Peter Jackson, or Steven Spielberg.

And people--enough people will go see the movie on your name that the studio says, "Okay, well, you know, this person's a star, they're a name brand."

And it takes a long time to do that. And, you know, Quentin was able to do it after Pulp Fiction, and that was--it's an incredible film, and that's why he's a great inspiration to me.

But, you know, it's really, really hard to do that. And I certainly would make studio movies, but honestly, I had such a great experience on Hostel, kind of making it independently,

working with a studio who bought it and then put more money into the sound mixing in that situation,

that I don't know if I could go and make a mainstream studio film. I mean, I'd like to try it.

I'd like to find a way to be like, you know, the guys like Spielberg and Peter Jackson and Raimi and all those directors who can do, like, fantastic,

incredible genre movies working within the confines of the studio.

But at this point, you know, I'm just having fun, kind of doing my own thing and finding my own voice.

And I would really like to say thank you to all the fans that have supported me. You know, the internet level's a playing field.

It's these message boards. You know, you guys know, anyone who's ever seen me or met me at a convention, you know,

see me, you know, buying old issues of Fangoria magazine or rare, weird import DVDs, you guys know that, like, I'm doing this because I love it.

And that, you know, before I started directing, I was that guy at conventions. And, and, you know, I really, really want to say thank you to all the fans.

And it's always easy to go out and bash and, you know, you read people on the internet that just want to absolutely fucking kill you, which I find hilarious.

But, you know, it's like, if you really don't like me that much, just don't see the films. It's really not that difficult.

But, you know, I do want to say thank you to all the fans who supported me and all the filmmakers, you know, guys like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin.

Mick Garris and Toby Hooper and certainly Peter Jackson. That's why I gave Peter Jackson the thanks to Fran Walsh and, you know, David Lynch.

There's so many other directors, Paul Thomas Anderson, that have met me and been so encouraging.

And, you know, there's a whole wave of young filmmakers out there like Richard Kelly and Edgar Wright and Darren Bousman and Lucky McKee and James Wan.

And we all just want to go out and make really cool, interesting stuff that's different that's outside the studio system and Rob Zombie, I know.

And, you know, I just want to say that the survival of movies like Hostel depends on going to see them opening weekend.

And obviously it's too late now and the DVD's out and who knows what happened.

This is being recorded two and a half weeks before the film's release.

So, you know, maybe if I had done it after, it'd be either a celebration or, you know, my own epitaph.

But I do want to say if you're watching this DVD, it means you saw the movie and thank you.

And I just want you to know this thing was made with love and made by hand, really made by people that just care so much about making horror movies.

And I hope you enjoy it and hope you go see the next one.

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