Eli Roth Net Worth

Eli Roth's Quotes

• [interview with Dave Kehr in the New York Times, September 2002] I'll direct any movie starring a monkey or the Olsen Twins. Preferably both.
• I would shoot in the Czech Republic over the States any day. There's no unions here, so the dollar goes a lot farther. You can film with kids without the same kind of strict regulations and hassles you get in the U.S.
• I know your second film can make or break you, because you're either a bona fide director or a one hit wonder.
• I am very lucky to have good people around me to bounce ideas off of. They bring out the best in you.
• Hype can be the best thing in the world, but too much of it can kill you. There's this weird balance between getting people excited to see the film, and not wanting to over-hype it to the point where they can't enjoy it because they've been told it's so great. Cabin Fever was definitely a victim of that, and people got really angry if it didn't live up to their expectations that they read on the Internet. The truth is, with movies like Hostel and Cabin Fever, the Internet's our only shot. They don't have the big stars like War of the Worlds, and they don't have the advertising dollars that these films do. Studios can spend $30-$40 million marketing a movie. How do you compete with that? You have to find a way to get fans to support your movie, and the Internet's the only way to reach them directly without a huge budget. However, the danger is that if you catch that hype wave and people are excited, you have crazy expectations to live up to. People's enjoyment of a movie is directly related to what their expectations of that movie are. If they heard Cabin Fever was some weirdo low budget scary/funny indie movie that got a distribution deal at a festival, they tended to like it much more than people who heard it was the second coming. The other danger is that people get sick of you - fast, and I know people out there are tired of reading about me.

Interesting Facts about Eli Roth

1. He won a Student Academy Award in 1995 for his N.Y.U. thesis film Restaurant Dogs (1994).
2. He spent six years researching a project for director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti that will be written for Broadway.
3. He got his idea for Cabin Fever (2002) when he was in Iceland and contracted a case of a flesh-eating disease. The now infamous shaving-legs scene in the bathtub is based on when Roth shaved his face and layers of skin came off while having the disease.
4. He was the inspiration for the character Eli, the aspiring porn director, in the film The Girl Next Door (2004). One of the writers was friends with Cabin Fever (2002) editor Ryan Folsey, and spent time in the editing room, secretly writing down everything Roth was saying. Roth found out about this when several actors he knew auditioned for the film, and told him there was a character named Eli who spoke exactly like him. Roth confirmed this with the writer, who was promptly kicked out of the editing room.
5. He is friends with director Chloe Nicole, aka Chloe Nichole, who directed the Cabin Fever X-rated parody Sex Fever (2003). Chloe had visited the Cabin Fever (2002) set during shooting, and then directed the sexy spoof without telling Roth. In Sex Fever (2003), Chloe spoofed Roth's character Justin, making her director's cameo as a lost hiker, just as Roth did in Cabin Fever (2002). Roth was flattered that she made the film, but was disappointed he was not invited to visit her set in return.
6. He suffers from psoriasis, a genetic, non-contagious skin disorder which can have crippling effects. When Roth suffered his first attack at age 22, his skin was cracked and bleeding so badly that he could not walk or wear clothes. He based many of the events in Cabin Fever (2002) on his own skin-curdling experiences.
7. He paid for his student films by working as an on-line sex operator for Penthouse magazine, back when only doctors and scientists were on the Internet. Subscribers paid $30 an hour to have sex with Roth and his N.Y.U. friends, thinking they were gorgeous Penthouse models. Roth claims that these experiences inspire many of the characters he writes today.
8. Quentin Tarantino called Roth "the future of horror" in the May 2004 issue of Premiere magazine, a year before Roth made Hostel (2005), which Tarantino executive-produced.
9. He is a huge fan of Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen. While filming Cabin Fever (2002), Roth played the Olsen Twins's film Holiday in the Sun (2001) on a continuous loop in a screening room, to give the cast and crew "artistic inspiration.".
10. When he worked as a production assistant for Howard Stern on the set of Private Parts (1997), he worked the late shift from about 11pm to 7am. During this time he spent rewriting and reworking the Cabin Fever (2002) script because he says it was "problematic at best.".
11. He is the brother of Adam J. Roth and Gabriel Roth and son of Sheldon Roth and Cora Roth.
12. He shared nearly all the profits from the enormously successful Cabin Fever (2002) with his cast and crew members, who took very little pay up front in order to get the film made.
13. He does incredible voice impressions and will often entertain his cast and crew during long camera setups with imitations of everyone working on his film.
14. He was fired by director Martin Brest on Meet Joe Black (1998) for being an "untalented stand-in." Roth later worked on the film as a production assistant, but was hidden from the director, put in the basement of the studio, where he turned the air conditioning on and off between takes.
15. Although his films are frequently advertised as such, he reportedly does not personally take the "film by" or "an Eli Roth film" credit because he believes that people should be able to distinguish your work from the film itself, not the opening titles or poster. He believes filmmaking is a collaborative process, and feels the credit disrespects the people who brought their own creativity to the project.
16. He owns an Icelandic horse named Bara, who he keeps on the horse farm in Selfoss, Iceland, where he lived when he was 19.
17. His father Sheldon Roth is a world renowned psychiatrist/psychoanalyst and a professor at the Harvard University medical school. His mother Cora Roth is a painter who shows her work at the O.K. Harris gallery in New York City.
18. He was originally approached to be the voice of the computer trivia game "You Don't Know Jack," but turned it down to write Cabin Fever (2002).
19. He spends every summer at Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York. Roth claims that the beautiful old hotel, built in 1869, is a continued source of inspiration for scary ideas. Other guests of the mountain house include Roth's favorite writer Stephen King.
20. He cannot stand the sight of real blood, saying it makes him sick to his stomach. Movie blood, however, has no effect on him.