Cabin Fever has just been released on DVD and now you can watch the skin peel off a hot girls legs in the privacy of your own home. When I first saw Cabin Fever I had only heard that it took place in a cabin in the middle of the woods, co-writer/director Eli Roth was a bit of a film geek and that Harry Knowles had been hailing it as the new hotness. To me, that makes me think that the movie was going to be pure buffalo mozzarella and a total rip-off of the Evil Dead movies.
But after seeing the film I knew that that Roth was a new horror visionary on the scene. Its a film thats not just monsters jumping out giving the cheap scare. Its a film that pays great homage to the horror films of the 1970s, mostly David Cronenberg films. Perhaps well be hailing Eli Roth as the new Baron of blood.
While the marketing campaign that came along with the theatrical release of Cabin Fever may have been slightly misleading, the DVD is dead on with Roths weird and funny sensibilities. Highlights on the DVD include Chick-Vision which covers up any offending scenes, the Family version which is about one minute long and many cartoon shorts, called The Rotten Fruit. The Rotten Fruit is a British hardcore rock band, composed of fruit, which vomits and trashes hotel rooms.
I got a chance to talk with Roth about his upcoming work with Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly, the affect of Aint it Cool News and gore.
Check out the website for Cabin Fever.
Daniel Robert Epstein: So youre a big fan of SuicideGirls.
Eli Roth: We love SuicideGirls; I was actually made aware of it after Rob Zombie did an interview.
DRE: That was me who talked with him.
ER: I became addicted to it ever since; I think its great.
DRE: Are they your kind of girls?
ER: Well I like all kinds of girls [laughs]. I dont discriminate when it comes to girls. But I think that the SuicideGirls tend to be more open to really disgusting horror movies.
DRE: Oh yeah they love horror movies.
ER: Theyre into the same stuff that Im into so I love those girls. Unfortunately Im so not their type of guy. I dont have any piercings, I have like one earring and I have no tattoos. Im fairly clean cut.
DRE: Im the same exact way too.
ER: So the girls like that generally dont look at me and think Im into the cool stuff.
DRE: I mean I first found SuicideGirls because I looked up naked Goth girls on Google.
ER: Right.
DRE: So, thats just fun to look at.
ER: Naked Goth girls [laughs].
DRE: So when Cabin Fever opened at $9M you must have been ecstatic.
ER: I was thrilled. The movie cost a million and a half dollars to make and with a film with no distributor theres no guarantee whatsoever so you dont think youll ever see a dime. So, first of all to have it hit theaters and have it be Lions Gate widest release ever on 2100 screens was incredible. But then theres the real test, I co-wrote this in 1995 so Ive had this movie in my head for almost eight years. So youre just sitting there thinking god I hope it works [laughs]. I was so happy it was a huge opening for Lions Gate. I think it was their second highest opening ever.
DRE: Oh really?
ER: Yeah, but the truth of the matter is that we went up against huge movies and we still we came in pretty close behind Nicolas Cage in Matchstick Men, but we knew Johnny Depp would be number one but I was still thrilled. The movie made five times its budget in its opening week which is pretty incredible. I know there was statistics from The Hollywood Reporter that its the most profitable horror movie of the year and I think the most profit-turning movie since Blair Witch based on what it cost. Howard Stern was talking about it and it was on like every single website.
DRE: Did Howard like it?
ER: Howard loved it. Hes been plugging the movie. Its just an incredible feeling especially after so many years of rejection where no company would ever make it. Finally I found other producers and we formed a company and made it on our own. So at the end of the day to know that it opened with just good actors and no major stars. Basically I worked my whole life towards something and then it happens.
DRE: I read a couple things. Did Lions Gate buy it for $12 million or did they spend $12 million in marketing?
ER: They bought it for three and a half million. We made everyones money back. I think they spent upwards of $12M in advertising. So the total package was $15 million.
DRE: That must have been really amazing just to make back your investors money because I know that a lot of filmmakers feel an obligation to their investors as well as making a film.
ER: Yeah, well thats the tricky part. The highest compliment is that people did not know Cabin Fever was an independent film. Many thought it was a regular studio release and thats actually it is a very fine line because you want to make the best film possible. So you also have this incredible pressure that if people dont make their money back theyre going to be financially ruined. This was financed by my aunt, my parents, friends and many people that risked their personal fortune. My dad took money out of his retirement; other people had spent their entire savings so if we didnt make the money back it would have turned into this vortex. Then there was this incredible moment where its like this great weight was lifted knowing that everybody not only had made their money back but its really going to make a substantial amount of money on their investment.
DRE: I read that [co-writer] Randy Pearlstein said that you and he got together to write something more commercial. Is that true?
ER: No, that doesnt sound right.
DRE: Okay, then ignore that [laughs].
ER: I wrote the first draft and Randy was my roommate while I was living in New York. At the time I brought him in to help rewrite the script with me and he really helped to flesh out the characters, so to speak, and add other layers to the story. He did things like help structure the movie and make the characters more realistic. I always believed that if you made a really, really, sick disgusting horror movie there would be a huge audience for it. The beauty is that Ive always said to people you dont need stars, you dont need big production value and often the reverse is true. If you have a low-budget movie it somehow feels more real and it makes it scarier if you dont have preconceived notions and associations with the characters. In certain types of horror films it makes it scarier. The Blair Witch Project is a prime example of that.
People just want to be scared and grossed out. All these companies said that the movie was too final, that it was uncommercial or they hated the fact that it was scary and funny. Thats something that a lot of people have problems with. People are so used to being spoon fed bad movies that their minds arent open to other forms of film. Also the marketing campaign was very misleading. I thought that certain things were excellent, but I was frustrated that they didnt tell people it was funny. People that expected it to be funny and scary get their expectations met and the people that are expecting 28 Days Later are totally thrown off. This film is a weird, creepy roller-coaster ride thats supposed to be funny and then it just gets weird and everything is just dark and fucked up.
DRE: One of the main comments, from the people that didnt like Cabin Fever, was that they thought that at times it got a little silly. Certain points that got silly such as the pancakes kid and the last scene. You could have just as easily made this a much darker movie by cutting those scenes out
ER: Of course, but thats not the movie I wanted to make. I wanted to make a movie that was weird and funny. Thats my style. If you go to a restaurant and you order chicken and they bring you steak youre frustrated because you saw something on the menu and thats what you paid for but then something arrives that wasnt what you were expecting. Thats what happens when you see a commercial and it says this is the scariest movie youve ever seen. You go there expecting to be scared and when its funny youre thinking, why isnt this scary? But if you were told from the beginning that this movie is funny and scary and you were in the mood for that and paid money then youd be open to that kind of stuff. I think people need to be prepared for what theyre going to see. People generally arent open to something thats kind of alternative or weird.
DRE: But youre not saying to reveal too much about the movie in trailers. Thats not what you meant.
ER: No, its got to be some hint of it. Which is why on the cover of the DVD they put the Peter Jackson quote, hilarious bloodbath.
DRE: Right, right.
ER: To let people know that theres going to be humor and that its okay to laugh. I also hate movies where everything is explained to you. If you watch Japanese movies like Suicide Circle or The Grudge they dont explain everything.
I love Twin Peaks where youre sitting there and youre thinking about it and it could be your own interpretation. It drives me crazy that people feel that the director owes it to them to absolutely explain every little thing. I dont think film works that way. They dont explain everything in The Shining. Watch the first 45 minutes of The Exorcist and try and explain whats going on. You cant, its just mood, its weird and I think that horror films are the last frontier where you can be experimental. I knew that Cabin Fever was a love it or hate it kind of movie.
DRE: What did Harry Knowles [of Aint It Cool] raving about Cabin Fever do for you?
ER: It had tremendous influence.
DRE: Like what?
ER: Okay, heres how it helped Cabin Fever. We shot the movie then we got shut down by the union and they took all our money so I had three quarters of a movie and I owed the crew a hundred thousand dollars and needed six hundred thousand to finish the film. Were running on fumes, living on credit cards and editing the movie. I showed the rough cut of the movie to my effects guys KNB Effects. They loved it.
They wrote Harry Knowles a letter saying we feel this is the best horror movie weve worked on since Evil Dead 2. Which is the highest compliment for a horror film and I was shocked that they wrote that. Then Harry called me and I told him, Look, I need money to finish the film. Id love to show it to you when its done. But we ended up talking about art and he got to know me a little. So Harry writes something on his site saying, Hey guys I just got a hot tip about this Cabin Fever movie. Since Harry wrote that I can print that out and show it to investors. The investors know how many people read Ain't it Cool. Their concern is if they invest in this movie will the fans come out and support it. I say look, Harry Knowles is on our side, and once they saw that they felt comfortable investing in the movie.
DRE: Wow!
ER: So I got the money to finish the film with the help of Harry. A few months later the Toronto Film Festival placed us dead last out of 343 films.
Now its a 12-day festival and a lot of the people just go home after several days. So I talked to Harry and he writes this whole thing on his site saying I havent seen this movie but Ive got a gut feeling Cabin Fever is the one everyone is going to be talking about. So if youre planning on leaving early, dont. Change your flight plan today, because Harry wrote that it started this buzz and everyone talked about it. So by the end of the festival, we got a huge sale. A movie like Cabin Fever with no distributor, no stars, no money, that thing from Harry made all the difference in the world
Buyers need to know if they buy this movie will it be supported on the Internet. Thats just very important to them for a movie like Cabin Fever. Harry is a very good barometer as to whether or not other sites will support it.
DRE: Unbelievable!
ER: Yeah, it is unbelievable, Im glad the guy has good taste.
DRE: [laughs] Did you meet anyone up close that didnt like your movie?
ER: Oh sure. I know there are a lot of people who dont like the movie. But the people that generally come up to me and talk to me at horror conventions or if Im at a screening, are people that like the movie. Because if you hate the movie they dont seek me out to tell me how much they hate it. So generally the feedback that I get is positive. Now Ive read message boards so I know what people think about it. I met one critic and I talked to him and hes like, I hated it because I thought I heard it was scary and its getting all this attention. I heard you worked with David Lynch and I expected He brought all this baggage to the movie so I talked to him and I turned him around. When his review came out hes like, this movies great.
I felt that he wasnt criticizing the movie but was criticizing the hype around the movie.
DRE: What do you feel the problems were with it? Now that you can look at it objectively?
ER: Its weird because certain people criticize that the pancake scene doesnt make any sense. The thing that bothers me is the ending that the studio re-cut. There are certain scenes that I wish I could have made really much more grotesque like the hog lady. All my problems I have with the movie are stuff that I wish Id had more time to shoot, more time to do. I did make the movie I wanted to make and Im very happy with it. But there are always things you want to do different but Im so happy with the photography, I love the score, I love the sound design that kind of stuff.
DRE: Did you and Randy come up with a philosophy for the movie first or did that come out of the writing of the script? The philosophy to me is hell is other people.
ER: I wrote the original story and it was all about the gray area between wanting to help your friends but not wanting to get sick. This area between compassion, survival and where does everyone draw their own line. Also this feeling of the way people panic when theres a disease they dont understand and the way they react totally irrationally. People watch Cabin Fever and go well why dont they just drive to the doctor or whatever. But then you look at SARS breaking out and they just sealed off the apartment building in China. They wouldnt even let those people in the hospital. So whenever theres an illness that people dont understand, they go crazy. I loved the idea that you should do onto others as you want done to yourself and everything they do to other people finally happens to them. They light a guy on fire and in a weird way they all end up lit on fire. Theres this feeling that everyone is trying to avoid the problem by kind of sweeping it under the table and it comes back to bite them in the ass; those are the things that I was interested in
DRE: It seems like you had a ton of input on the DVD. Was it totally under your control?
ER: Completely yeah. Thats what was great. Lions Gate was really terrific about letting me have complete control of the DVD and we worked with a great company called Third Vector. They really care about doing DVDs the way the director wants to do them and I had this whole idea for this Chick-Vision. Every time 14 old girls saw the movie they would watch it through the cracks of their fingers. I felt like weve got to have a feature called Chick-Vision.
DRE: It kind of reminded me the way Todd Solondz put the red bar on Storytelling.
ER: Our thing is a joke, but it does run the whole film. What Todd Solondz did in Storytelling was he was so pissed off that the censors made him cut that scene so he slapped that red bar up.
DRE: I know you generate your own material but are offers rolling in?
ER: Its funny. Every remake gets sent to me. Theres a certain type of movie that gets sent to me. I get sent $15 million studio comedies.
DRE: Is that any of that stuff appealing to you? I know Todd Phillips films are different than yours but he saw Starsky & Hutch and just snatched it right up and thought it was a great idea for him.
ER: Todd Phillips is one of my favorite filmmakers. I would love to have a career like Todd Phillips because he makes kick ass documentaries.
DRE: Hes amazing.
ER: His comedies are as funny as hell.
Im writing a comedy for Universal Studios so that will be like American Pie. Its really like a Porkys type movie. But theres another script that Ive read called Drawn which was the scariest script that Ive ever read and now Im set to direct it.
DRE: Oh wow. Who wrote Drawn?
ER: This guy Rand Ravage who wrote and directed the Astronauts Wife. Ive probably read two or three hundred scripts and its the only one thats made me stop in my tracks. Im also writing a movie with Richard Kelly who wrote and directed Donnie Darko.
DRE: When a script shows up and its written by the guy who did The Astronauts Wife do you go, Ah, what the fuck?
ER: No the way it works is my agent calls me and says the guy who wrote The Astronauts Wife wrote a script and I think youd love it. Hes not attached to direct it but would love to know what you think about it. He sends it to me and I go, oh my god, then I met him and we sit down and talk about the Astronauts Wife. Where it went wrong and what happened to the making of that movie. Hes a very smart guy and I said I would want to adapt these changes into the script and he totally agreed with them and he implemented them. So it was the first time I ever got to work with a writer just as a director where my ideas get into the movie and you can really make a project your own.
Then my agent will call and tell me theyre sending over The Dukes of Hazzard.
DRE: Did you like The Dukes of Hazzard when you were a kid?
ER: Loved it.
DRE: So when the script for the movie showed, did you say to yourself Man I would love to do something like this. But then you realized it was going to be two years of your life and its only The Dukes of Hazzard?
ER: No, I mean I havent read the script yet. But its got to be something that I feel I can make into great movie. If I read the script and go, theres a great idea here and Id like to rewrite it then theyll let me do that.
The thing about Cabin Fever is since I am the co-writer, producer and director is that I had total control of the film. But for my next film I definitely want to do a much bigger budget movie. I dont want keep making low-budget horror films its too exhausting and stressful, I cant afford it.
DRE: Do you have a girlfriend? Im not asking you out or anything.
ER: No not currently.
DRE: Did you get laid a lot for when traveling around with this movie?
ER: First of all you dont get laid when youre making a move, at all. Theres no sex for like a year and a half. Thats the first thing you have to be willing to give up, not because youre a director in Hollywood and you cant meet girls. But you have no time and youre constantly thinking about the movie. Its like it infects you and takes over everything. The next thing you realize is you havent had sex in like two years then the movie ends. Once we sold the movie up in Toronto there was kind of a spree where I finally made up for lost time.
DRE: How easy was it to get laid?
ER: Traveling the world with the movie I get to go to different countries. Youll meet a girl and the girl always assumes, Yeah I bet you do this at every festival and youre like, no I really dont, and theyre like, yeah, yeah, youre a director, youre single, you probably fuck girls at every festival, Im not going to be that girl. Im not going to be that one that just fucks you. So I just go around from festival to festival to festival and wind up trying to convince girls that I dont have sex with other girls at festivals.
At the end of the day I just wound up hanging around with other directors and stuff because heres Richard Stanley who made Dust Devil. Hes so cool, am I going to run off with some idiot chick or am I going to sit here and ask him about when he got fired off Dr. Moreau and hid as one of the characters working as an extra.
DRE: Really?
ER: Yeah its like fascinating so thats what happened.
DRE: But if you went as not the main guest then youd get laid.
ER: Yeah I went to the Fangoria convention last weekend and I will say nothing other than the bite marks and scratch marks wont go away.
DRE: [laughs] Are there more personal stories that you want to tell? Like non-genre type?
ER: About what?
DRE: About yourself.
ER: Sure. Its been incredible; this whole thing has been an incredible journey. In the last year, my life has turned completely upside down. Where one minute youre totally broke and youre sitting in an editing room and the next youre being flown around the world and youre meeting Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino. Ive really met all of my heroes and Ive also learned a lot. Im living my dream and Im also being very careful to make sure that I enjoy it. Ive started up a horror company with some other filmmakers and its called Raw Nerve and were going to be producing three to five low budget horror movies a year so that way even if Im directing a movie, like when I make my teen comedy for Universal, Ill have at least several horror movies in production that Im involved in.
DRE: So you saw the Olsen twins got into NYU right?
ER: I was so excited that the Olsen twins are going to NYU and I now want to go and teach at NYU. So this movie, Drawn, is the ideal movie for the Suicide Girls. Its really dark, apocalyptic, fucked up, scary and very violent but I guarantee if the Olsens twins were like hey Eli, we want to make a move where we co-star with a monkey. Ill do it in a heartbeat.
DRE: Tell me about The Box.
ER: Its going to be great. They just announced that we closed the deal. Richard Kelly and I are writing this movie. Its going to be a very scary, dark twisted weird much more of a horror thriller, much more in the vein of a film like the old Polanski movies. Its based on a Richard Matheson story. Rich and I have total creative control and whats great about it is we can make it as dark and fucked up as we want.
DRE: Why hasnt Richard Kelly done a second movie after Donnie Darko?
ER: Richard is very smart and he doesnt want to do a bad sophomore movie. Rich is very meticulous and very careful. Believe me I always say to Rich that I get table scraps because any script that is sent to me, multiple that by twenty and thats what is sent to Rich as well. He is interested in making movies like the directors that we admire like Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. These guys really were very meticulous and careful in plotting their careers and there are other directors that make one interesting film and then flame out because they make a bunch of crappy movies afterward. We are very carefully and purposefully trying to plot our careers in a similar pattern and not just run out and take the first movie that is offered to us.
Whats happened with Rich is that every A list director like Jonathan Mostow are all having Rich write movies for them. Rich is such a hot writer that he can make a tremendous living that off that alone.
DRE: He could be like John Sayles.
ER: Right exactly. But its very difficult to put a movie together and Rich has an incredible project called, Knowing. So thats just been a matter of finding the right lead actor and getting the timing right. Knowing is an amazing and huge sci-fi movie. Thats what hes doing. Wed rather make movies that we really care about.
DRE: Is the Donnie Darko directors cut going to be more confusing or less confusing?
ER: Well whats youre definition of confusing. There are some people that think Mulholland Drive is confusing and I happen to feel like I completely understand that movie perfectly. Anyway I dont go see Donnie Darko directors cut expecting to find a narrative.
DRE: So you have these Master of Horror pizza parties with some of the people you admire. A lot of those guys either cant make films anymore, dont get to make films anymore or dont make good films anymore. Do you look at them and go, what can I do to make that not happen to me?
ER: I think its a combination. What Ive seen from these guys if they made one larger budget movie but it didnt do well necessarily that really hurt them.
A lot of their friends who scored big early on turned on them. People get pigeonholed as hard directors and the times changed in the 90s so you couldnt make violent movies, the studios wouldnt let you. So what I saw was a lot of these directors, it wasnt so much that they started making bad movies it was that they started making bigger movies and as they were making bigger movies, more studio interference got in and started really ruining the films by re-cutting and taking out all the violence. You ask someone what happened on a particular movie and once they explained to you what their original vision was, what they originally shot was, its shocking so I think that its just a careful navigation. The people that are sticking around have figured it out such as Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.
DRE: Larry Cohen seems to be catching up too.
ER: Larry Cohen is doing great. Youve got to find ways to make studio movies and still retain that control. Thats what Im going to learn when Im going to make a studio movie.
DRE: Oh I loved the extra on the Cabin Fever DVD where you played Electric 6s Gay Bar song while the pancakes kid does a martial arts routine. How did you get that?
ER: The kid sent that to me out of nowhere. Originally it was this tape of him doing karate to the Miami Sound Machine and we wanted to use it on the DVD but they couldnt get the rights. So then Lions Gate was able to get the rights to Gay Bar.
DRE: Which is a great song.
ER: I sent it to him and asked him to recreate the tape exactly. He recreated the original tape and choreographed the moves. Hes so funny that he just did it in like two days. Hes got a great sense of humor but he knows its weird and stuff.
DRE: I loved The Rotten Fruit cartoons.
ER: Thank you. My friend Noah [Belson] and I wrote those before Cabin Fever and we put up a website called Rottenfruit.com. Im putting together a DVD of all the episodes. Noah and I wrote them then I produced and directed them. We had a whole animation studio and Noah and I did all the voices.
DRE: That must have taken forever.
ER: We would do new episodes every two weeks. An entire episode start to finish completely sound mixed and edited in nine or ten days.
DRE: How did you do that?
ER: We worked our asses off. I had a good crew and a good system on how to do them every two weeks. We shot them on digital video. It was really fun.
DRE: Did you see the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake?
ER: Yeah I had a really cool time at that. I think that if you go see a remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre comparing it to the first one, youre setting yourself up for disaster. If you go to see it thinking am I having fun? Am I scared? Then its totally enjoyable
DRE: Dawn of the Dead the only thing I could think of is that if you look at it now its actually not a very well put together movie. Its not edited very well. Thats the only reason I could justify remaking that movie.
ER: If you think about it the difference in the time of the Dawn of the Dead remakes is the same difference in time between the remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When those films came out Im sure someone was like, How dare they remake that!
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
But after seeing the film I knew that that Roth was a new horror visionary on the scene. Its a film thats not just monsters jumping out giving the cheap scare. Its a film that pays great homage to the horror films of the 1970s, mostly David Cronenberg films. Perhaps well be hailing Eli Roth as the new Baron of blood.
While the marketing campaign that came along with the theatrical release of Cabin Fever may have been slightly misleading, the DVD is dead on with Roths weird and funny sensibilities. Highlights on the DVD include Chick-Vision which covers up any offending scenes, the Family version which is about one minute long and many cartoon shorts, called The Rotten Fruit. The Rotten Fruit is a British hardcore rock band, composed of fruit, which vomits and trashes hotel rooms.
I got a chance to talk with Roth about his upcoming work with Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly, the affect of Aint it Cool News and gore.
Check out the website for Cabin Fever.
Daniel Robert Epstein: So youre a big fan of SuicideGirls.
Eli Roth: We love SuicideGirls; I was actually made aware of it after Rob Zombie did an interview.
DRE: That was me who talked with him.
ER: I became addicted to it ever since; I think its great.
DRE: Are they your kind of girls?
ER: Well I like all kinds of girls [laughs]. I dont discriminate when it comes to girls. But I think that the SuicideGirls tend to be more open to really disgusting horror movies.
DRE: Oh yeah they love horror movies.
ER: Theyre into the same stuff that Im into so I love those girls. Unfortunately Im so not their type of guy. I dont have any piercings, I have like one earring and I have no tattoos. Im fairly clean cut.
DRE: Im the same exact way too.
ER: So the girls like that generally dont look at me and think Im into the cool stuff.
DRE: I mean I first found SuicideGirls because I looked up naked Goth girls on Google.
ER: Right.
DRE: So, thats just fun to look at.
ER: Naked Goth girls [laughs].
DRE: So when Cabin Fever opened at $9M you must have been ecstatic.
ER: I was thrilled. The movie cost a million and a half dollars to make and with a film with no distributor theres no guarantee whatsoever so you dont think youll ever see a dime. So, first of all to have it hit theaters and have it be Lions Gate widest release ever on 2100 screens was incredible. But then theres the real test, I co-wrote this in 1995 so Ive had this movie in my head for almost eight years. So youre just sitting there thinking god I hope it works [laughs]. I was so happy it was a huge opening for Lions Gate. I think it was their second highest opening ever.
DRE: Oh really?
ER: Yeah, but the truth of the matter is that we went up against huge movies and we still we came in pretty close behind Nicolas Cage in Matchstick Men, but we knew Johnny Depp would be number one but I was still thrilled. The movie made five times its budget in its opening week which is pretty incredible. I know there was statistics from The Hollywood Reporter that its the most profitable horror movie of the year and I think the most profit-turning movie since Blair Witch based on what it cost. Howard Stern was talking about it and it was on like every single website.
DRE: Did Howard like it?
ER: Howard loved it. Hes been plugging the movie. Its just an incredible feeling especially after so many years of rejection where no company would ever make it. Finally I found other producers and we formed a company and made it on our own. So at the end of the day to know that it opened with just good actors and no major stars. Basically I worked my whole life towards something and then it happens.
DRE: I read a couple things. Did Lions Gate buy it for $12 million or did they spend $12 million in marketing?
ER: They bought it for three and a half million. We made everyones money back. I think they spent upwards of $12M in advertising. So the total package was $15 million.
DRE: That must have been really amazing just to make back your investors money because I know that a lot of filmmakers feel an obligation to their investors as well as making a film.
ER: Yeah, well thats the tricky part. The highest compliment is that people did not know Cabin Fever was an independent film. Many thought it was a regular studio release and thats actually it is a very fine line because you want to make the best film possible. So you also have this incredible pressure that if people dont make their money back theyre going to be financially ruined. This was financed by my aunt, my parents, friends and many people that risked their personal fortune. My dad took money out of his retirement; other people had spent their entire savings so if we didnt make the money back it would have turned into this vortex. Then there was this incredible moment where its like this great weight was lifted knowing that everybody not only had made their money back but its really going to make a substantial amount of money on their investment.
DRE: I read that [co-writer] Randy Pearlstein said that you and he got together to write something more commercial. Is that true?
ER: No, that doesnt sound right.
DRE: Okay, then ignore that [laughs].
ER: I wrote the first draft and Randy was my roommate while I was living in New York. At the time I brought him in to help rewrite the script with me and he really helped to flesh out the characters, so to speak, and add other layers to the story. He did things like help structure the movie and make the characters more realistic. I always believed that if you made a really, really, sick disgusting horror movie there would be a huge audience for it. The beauty is that Ive always said to people you dont need stars, you dont need big production value and often the reverse is true. If you have a low-budget movie it somehow feels more real and it makes it scarier if you dont have preconceived notions and associations with the characters. In certain types of horror films it makes it scarier. The Blair Witch Project is a prime example of that.
People just want to be scared and grossed out. All these companies said that the movie was too final, that it was uncommercial or they hated the fact that it was scary and funny. Thats something that a lot of people have problems with. People are so used to being spoon fed bad movies that their minds arent open to other forms of film. Also the marketing campaign was very misleading. I thought that certain things were excellent, but I was frustrated that they didnt tell people it was funny. People that expected it to be funny and scary get their expectations met and the people that are expecting 28 Days Later are totally thrown off. This film is a weird, creepy roller-coaster ride thats supposed to be funny and then it just gets weird and everything is just dark and fucked up.
DRE: One of the main comments, from the people that didnt like Cabin Fever, was that they thought that at times it got a little silly. Certain points that got silly such as the pancakes kid and the last scene. You could have just as easily made this a much darker movie by cutting those scenes out
ER: Of course, but thats not the movie I wanted to make. I wanted to make a movie that was weird and funny. Thats my style. If you go to a restaurant and you order chicken and they bring you steak youre frustrated because you saw something on the menu and thats what you paid for but then something arrives that wasnt what you were expecting. Thats what happens when you see a commercial and it says this is the scariest movie youve ever seen. You go there expecting to be scared and when its funny youre thinking, why isnt this scary? But if you were told from the beginning that this movie is funny and scary and you were in the mood for that and paid money then youd be open to that kind of stuff. I think people need to be prepared for what theyre going to see. People generally arent open to something thats kind of alternative or weird.
DRE: But youre not saying to reveal too much about the movie in trailers. Thats not what you meant.
ER: No, its got to be some hint of it. Which is why on the cover of the DVD they put the Peter Jackson quote, hilarious bloodbath.
DRE: Right, right.
ER: To let people know that theres going to be humor and that its okay to laugh. I also hate movies where everything is explained to you. If you watch Japanese movies like Suicide Circle or The Grudge they dont explain everything.
I love Twin Peaks where youre sitting there and youre thinking about it and it could be your own interpretation. It drives me crazy that people feel that the director owes it to them to absolutely explain every little thing. I dont think film works that way. They dont explain everything in The Shining. Watch the first 45 minutes of The Exorcist and try and explain whats going on. You cant, its just mood, its weird and I think that horror films are the last frontier where you can be experimental. I knew that Cabin Fever was a love it or hate it kind of movie.
DRE: What did Harry Knowles [of Aint It Cool] raving about Cabin Fever do for you?
ER: It had tremendous influence.
DRE: Like what?
ER: Okay, heres how it helped Cabin Fever. We shot the movie then we got shut down by the union and they took all our money so I had three quarters of a movie and I owed the crew a hundred thousand dollars and needed six hundred thousand to finish the film. Were running on fumes, living on credit cards and editing the movie. I showed the rough cut of the movie to my effects guys KNB Effects. They loved it.
They wrote Harry Knowles a letter saying we feel this is the best horror movie weve worked on since Evil Dead 2. Which is the highest compliment for a horror film and I was shocked that they wrote that. Then Harry called me and I told him, Look, I need money to finish the film. Id love to show it to you when its done. But we ended up talking about art and he got to know me a little. So Harry writes something on his site saying, Hey guys I just got a hot tip about this Cabin Fever movie. Since Harry wrote that I can print that out and show it to investors. The investors know how many people read Ain't it Cool. Their concern is if they invest in this movie will the fans come out and support it. I say look, Harry Knowles is on our side, and once they saw that they felt comfortable investing in the movie.
DRE: Wow!
ER: So I got the money to finish the film with the help of Harry. A few months later the Toronto Film Festival placed us dead last out of 343 films.
Now its a 12-day festival and a lot of the people just go home after several days. So I talked to Harry and he writes this whole thing on his site saying I havent seen this movie but Ive got a gut feeling Cabin Fever is the one everyone is going to be talking about. So if youre planning on leaving early, dont. Change your flight plan today, because Harry wrote that it started this buzz and everyone talked about it. So by the end of the festival, we got a huge sale. A movie like Cabin Fever with no distributor, no stars, no money, that thing from Harry made all the difference in the world
Buyers need to know if they buy this movie will it be supported on the Internet. Thats just very important to them for a movie like Cabin Fever. Harry is a very good barometer as to whether or not other sites will support it.
DRE: Unbelievable!
ER: Yeah, it is unbelievable, Im glad the guy has good taste.
DRE: [laughs] Did you meet anyone up close that didnt like your movie?
ER: Oh sure. I know there are a lot of people who dont like the movie. But the people that generally come up to me and talk to me at horror conventions or if Im at a screening, are people that like the movie. Because if you hate the movie they dont seek me out to tell me how much they hate it. So generally the feedback that I get is positive. Now Ive read message boards so I know what people think about it. I met one critic and I talked to him and hes like, I hated it because I thought I heard it was scary and its getting all this attention. I heard you worked with David Lynch and I expected He brought all this baggage to the movie so I talked to him and I turned him around. When his review came out hes like, this movies great.
I felt that he wasnt criticizing the movie but was criticizing the hype around the movie.
DRE: What do you feel the problems were with it? Now that you can look at it objectively?
ER: Its weird because certain people criticize that the pancake scene doesnt make any sense. The thing that bothers me is the ending that the studio re-cut. There are certain scenes that I wish I could have made really much more grotesque like the hog lady. All my problems I have with the movie are stuff that I wish Id had more time to shoot, more time to do. I did make the movie I wanted to make and Im very happy with it. But there are always things you want to do different but Im so happy with the photography, I love the score, I love the sound design that kind of stuff.
DRE: Did you and Randy come up with a philosophy for the movie first or did that come out of the writing of the script? The philosophy to me is hell is other people.
ER: I wrote the original story and it was all about the gray area between wanting to help your friends but not wanting to get sick. This area between compassion, survival and where does everyone draw their own line. Also this feeling of the way people panic when theres a disease they dont understand and the way they react totally irrationally. People watch Cabin Fever and go well why dont they just drive to the doctor or whatever. But then you look at SARS breaking out and they just sealed off the apartment building in China. They wouldnt even let those people in the hospital. So whenever theres an illness that people dont understand, they go crazy. I loved the idea that you should do onto others as you want done to yourself and everything they do to other people finally happens to them. They light a guy on fire and in a weird way they all end up lit on fire. Theres this feeling that everyone is trying to avoid the problem by kind of sweeping it under the table and it comes back to bite them in the ass; those are the things that I was interested in
DRE: It seems like you had a ton of input on the DVD. Was it totally under your control?
ER: Completely yeah. Thats what was great. Lions Gate was really terrific about letting me have complete control of the DVD and we worked with a great company called Third Vector. They really care about doing DVDs the way the director wants to do them and I had this whole idea for this Chick-Vision. Every time 14 old girls saw the movie they would watch it through the cracks of their fingers. I felt like weve got to have a feature called Chick-Vision.
DRE: It kind of reminded me the way Todd Solondz put the red bar on Storytelling.
ER: Our thing is a joke, but it does run the whole film. What Todd Solondz did in Storytelling was he was so pissed off that the censors made him cut that scene so he slapped that red bar up.
DRE: I know you generate your own material but are offers rolling in?
ER: Its funny. Every remake gets sent to me. Theres a certain type of movie that gets sent to me. I get sent $15 million studio comedies.
DRE: Is that any of that stuff appealing to you? I know Todd Phillips films are different than yours but he saw Starsky & Hutch and just snatched it right up and thought it was a great idea for him.
ER: Todd Phillips is one of my favorite filmmakers. I would love to have a career like Todd Phillips because he makes kick ass documentaries.
DRE: Hes amazing.
ER: His comedies are as funny as hell.
Im writing a comedy for Universal Studios so that will be like American Pie. Its really like a Porkys type movie. But theres another script that Ive read called Drawn which was the scariest script that Ive ever read and now Im set to direct it.
DRE: Oh wow. Who wrote Drawn?
ER: This guy Rand Ravage who wrote and directed the Astronauts Wife. Ive probably read two or three hundred scripts and its the only one thats made me stop in my tracks. Im also writing a movie with Richard Kelly who wrote and directed Donnie Darko.
DRE: When a script shows up and its written by the guy who did The Astronauts Wife do you go, Ah, what the fuck?
ER: No the way it works is my agent calls me and says the guy who wrote The Astronauts Wife wrote a script and I think youd love it. Hes not attached to direct it but would love to know what you think about it. He sends it to me and I go, oh my god, then I met him and we sit down and talk about the Astronauts Wife. Where it went wrong and what happened to the making of that movie. Hes a very smart guy and I said I would want to adapt these changes into the script and he totally agreed with them and he implemented them. So it was the first time I ever got to work with a writer just as a director where my ideas get into the movie and you can really make a project your own.
Then my agent will call and tell me theyre sending over The Dukes of Hazzard.
DRE: Did you like The Dukes of Hazzard when you were a kid?
ER: Loved it.
DRE: So when the script for the movie showed, did you say to yourself Man I would love to do something like this. But then you realized it was going to be two years of your life and its only The Dukes of Hazzard?
ER: No, I mean I havent read the script yet. But its got to be something that I feel I can make into great movie. If I read the script and go, theres a great idea here and Id like to rewrite it then theyll let me do that.
The thing about Cabin Fever is since I am the co-writer, producer and director is that I had total control of the film. But for my next film I definitely want to do a much bigger budget movie. I dont want keep making low-budget horror films its too exhausting and stressful, I cant afford it.
DRE: Do you have a girlfriend? Im not asking you out or anything.
ER: No not currently.
DRE: Did you get laid a lot for when traveling around with this movie?
ER: First of all you dont get laid when youre making a move, at all. Theres no sex for like a year and a half. Thats the first thing you have to be willing to give up, not because youre a director in Hollywood and you cant meet girls. But you have no time and youre constantly thinking about the movie. Its like it infects you and takes over everything. The next thing you realize is you havent had sex in like two years then the movie ends. Once we sold the movie up in Toronto there was kind of a spree where I finally made up for lost time.
DRE: How easy was it to get laid?
ER: Traveling the world with the movie I get to go to different countries. Youll meet a girl and the girl always assumes, Yeah I bet you do this at every festival and youre like, no I really dont, and theyre like, yeah, yeah, youre a director, youre single, you probably fuck girls at every festival, Im not going to be that girl. Im not going to be that one that just fucks you. So I just go around from festival to festival to festival and wind up trying to convince girls that I dont have sex with other girls at festivals.
At the end of the day I just wound up hanging around with other directors and stuff because heres Richard Stanley who made Dust Devil. Hes so cool, am I going to run off with some idiot chick or am I going to sit here and ask him about when he got fired off Dr. Moreau and hid as one of the characters working as an extra.
DRE: Really?
ER: Yeah its like fascinating so thats what happened.
DRE: But if you went as not the main guest then youd get laid.
ER: Yeah I went to the Fangoria convention last weekend and I will say nothing other than the bite marks and scratch marks wont go away.
DRE: [laughs] Are there more personal stories that you want to tell? Like non-genre type?
ER: About what?
DRE: About yourself.
ER: Sure. Its been incredible; this whole thing has been an incredible journey. In the last year, my life has turned completely upside down. Where one minute youre totally broke and youre sitting in an editing room and the next youre being flown around the world and youre meeting Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino. Ive really met all of my heroes and Ive also learned a lot. Im living my dream and Im also being very careful to make sure that I enjoy it. Ive started up a horror company with some other filmmakers and its called Raw Nerve and were going to be producing three to five low budget horror movies a year so that way even if Im directing a movie, like when I make my teen comedy for Universal, Ill have at least several horror movies in production that Im involved in.
DRE: So you saw the Olsen twins got into NYU right?
ER: I was so excited that the Olsen twins are going to NYU and I now want to go and teach at NYU. So this movie, Drawn, is the ideal movie for the Suicide Girls. Its really dark, apocalyptic, fucked up, scary and very violent but I guarantee if the Olsens twins were like hey Eli, we want to make a move where we co-star with a monkey. Ill do it in a heartbeat.
DRE: Tell me about The Box.
ER: Its going to be great. They just announced that we closed the deal. Richard Kelly and I are writing this movie. Its going to be a very scary, dark twisted weird much more of a horror thriller, much more in the vein of a film like the old Polanski movies. Its based on a Richard Matheson story. Rich and I have total creative control and whats great about it is we can make it as dark and fucked up as we want.
DRE: Why hasnt Richard Kelly done a second movie after Donnie Darko?
ER: Richard is very smart and he doesnt want to do a bad sophomore movie. Rich is very meticulous and very careful. Believe me I always say to Rich that I get table scraps because any script that is sent to me, multiple that by twenty and thats what is sent to Rich as well. He is interested in making movies like the directors that we admire like Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino. These guys really were very meticulous and careful in plotting their careers and there are other directors that make one interesting film and then flame out because they make a bunch of crappy movies afterward. We are very carefully and purposefully trying to plot our careers in a similar pattern and not just run out and take the first movie that is offered to us.
Whats happened with Rich is that every A list director like Jonathan Mostow are all having Rich write movies for them. Rich is such a hot writer that he can make a tremendous living that off that alone.
DRE: He could be like John Sayles.
ER: Right exactly. But its very difficult to put a movie together and Rich has an incredible project called, Knowing. So thats just been a matter of finding the right lead actor and getting the timing right. Knowing is an amazing and huge sci-fi movie. Thats what hes doing. Wed rather make movies that we really care about.
DRE: Is the Donnie Darko directors cut going to be more confusing or less confusing?
ER: Well whats youre definition of confusing. There are some people that think Mulholland Drive is confusing and I happen to feel like I completely understand that movie perfectly. Anyway I dont go see Donnie Darko directors cut expecting to find a narrative.
DRE: So you have these Master of Horror pizza parties with some of the people you admire. A lot of those guys either cant make films anymore, dont get to make films anymore or dont make good films anymore. Do you look at them and go, what can I do to make that not happen to me?
ER: I think its a combination. What Ive seen from these guys if they made one larger budget movie but it didnt do well necessarily that really hurt them.
A lot of their friends who scored big early on turned on them. People get pigeonholed as hard directors and the times changed in the 90s so you couldnt make violent movies, the studios wouldnt let you. So what I saw was a lot of these directors, it wasnt so much that they started making bad movies it was that they started making bigger movies and as they were making bigger movies, more studio interference got in and started really ruining the films by re-cutting and taking out all the violence. You ask someone what happened on a particular movie and once they explained to you what their original vision was, what they originally shot was, its shocking so I think that its just a careful navigation. The people that are sticking around have figured it out such as Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson.
DRE: Larry Cohen seems to be catching up too.
ER: Larry Cohen is doing great. Youve got to find ways to make studio movies and still retain that control. Thats what Im going to learn when Im going to make a studio movie.
DRE: Oh I loved the extra on the Cabin Fever DVD where you played Electric 6s Gay Bar song while the pancakes kid does a martial arts routine. How did you get that?
ER: The kid sent that to me out of nowhere. Originally it was this tape of him doing karate to the Miami Sound Machine and we wanted to use it on the DVD but they couldnt get the rights. So then Lions Gate was able to get the rights to Gay Bar.
DRE: Which is a great song.
ER: I sent it to him and asked him to recreate the tape exactly. He recreated the original tape and choreographed the moves. Hes so funny that he just did it in like two days. Hes got a great sense of humor but he knows its weird and stuff.
DRE: I loved The Rotten Fruit cartoons.
ER: Thank you. My friend Noah [Belson] and I wrote those before Cabin Fever and we put up a website called Rottenfruit.com. Im putting together a DVD of all the episodes. Noah and I wrote them then I produced and directed them. We had a whole animation studio and Noah and I did all the voices.
DRE: That must have taken forever.
ER: We would do new episodes every two weeks. An entire episode start to finish completely sound mixed and edited in nine or ten days.
DRE: How did you do that?
ER: We worked our asses off. I had a good crew and a good system on how to do them every two weeks. We shot them on digital video. It was really fun.
DRE: Did you see the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake?
ER: Yeah I had a really cool time at that. I think that if you go see a remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre comparing it to the first one, youre setting yourself up for disaster. If you go to see it thinking am I having fun? Am I scared? Then its totally enjoyable
DRE: Dawn of the Dead the only thing I could think of is that if you look at it now its actually not a very well put together movie. Its not edited very well. Thats the only reason I could justify remaking that movie.
ER: If you think about it the difference in the time of the Dawn of the Dead remakes is the same difference in time between the remakes of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. When those films came out Im sure someone was like, How dare they remake that!
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
i dont even know where to start with reasons why.
im running out to get it right now.
~Natalie
What a piece of shit that movie was. Pretentious gore-slut hanging out with truly great directors like Takashi Miike.