Be warned: Through this interview we DO talk a few spoilers. I’m going to put CLEAR spoiler warnings in there, you’ll be able to skip over those parts and keep reading if you wish, don’t worry they’ll be clearly marked. J

——————————————–

Noah: Hey Steve!

Steve: Hey Noah how you doing mate.

Noah: I’m good man how’re you doing.

Steve: I’m good man, it’s the first interview in around 18 months where I didn’t have to get up at like 3am so I’m quite good!

Noah: What time is it for you???

Steve: It’s around 10am. So for once I’m awake and happy about it.

Noah: Aaah so it’s like 10am around two Thursdays from now right! *laughs*

Steve: *laughs* So how you been? Good?

Noah: Yeah man, I’ve been good, been a little bit busy, been very happy, looking forward to seeing some movies come out and seeing what folks think about them.

Steve: Yeah Lionsgate gave me the online screener of CabinFever 2 last night and I just watched it and I really have to say I enjoyed it, had a blast watching it.

Noah: Oh good, good! Well I enjoyed it very much as well! We had a blast making it, and when you have a blast making it, you hope when you have as much fun making it as we did, you hope people have as much fun watching it.

Steve: Well, one of the things is, alot of crap goes around on the net when movies are being made, you can’t believe like, 1/100^th of the negative rumors you tend to read. I mean all the negative stuff I read about Cabin Fever 2, I pushed to the back of my head, because I learnt when I saw Wrong Turn 2, I read all this stuff saying it was going to ‘be a disaster, a bad movie’, when I saw it, I thought it was brilliant, when I saw Cabin Fever 2, I thought it was great!

Noah: Well, I think, the Cabin Fever films, specifically this film, they take a specific sensibility to get into them. These days the horror community are very, very smart. They want something different, they wanna be put on their ass by laughing, by crying, by being shocked, by asking questions, its something that was a hallmark of the first film and something we were trying to maintain with this film in addition to pop culture references and trying to create a little world within the Cabin Fever world and so I think that it’s a hard thing to discuss when you talk about irony and subversiveness and humor and horror and… you kinda have to be a young person to get into that, to really get onto that page so to speak?

Steve: I mean there were bits in the movie where, and yeah we are about to talk spoilers… where:

*SPOILER MOMENT SKIP OVER IF YOU DON’T WANT ANYTHING SPOILED*

Steve: there’s a bit where you and Alexi Wasser, you’re in the classroom and the teacher is on the ground, you’ve been through a lot of laughs, giggles and shocks, then there’s a teacher on the ground and she’s pleading with you… it might be played for laughs or giggles… then the CDC guy comes in and she pleads with him and he… he shoots her? And I’m thinking holy sh…

Noah: The moment leading up to that is one of the more pathetic moments and I specialise is pathos in movies, and that was one of the more pathetic moments I’ve been involved in, that was one of the more… it kinda tugs on your heart strings because it was one of the more… because all of a sudden it feels like it kinda got *real* you know!?

Steve: Yeah, that’s actually the feeling I got when I was watching the movie and I was like ‘Wow this just went from being a sequel where I thought we were having fun, got lots of gore to wow this just went really serious…’

*SPOILERS MOMENT ENDS*

Noah: Absolutely! And you know I think that this is a very modern tone within horror films, where I think the Cabin Fever films are laying the foundation for, which is you know, when you talk horror movies, you acknowledge its about pushing buttons. When you wanna scare somebody, you keep them on their toes, you have to switch it up, you know it’s something I’m really appreciative of with these new films, it’s a direction I see the genre going in that I’m really excited about, cause what it means is that if you’re a manic, neurotic guy like I am, *laughs* it means you’re gonna get lots of options, it means you’re gonna laugh one moment and cry the next, all of a sudden it means you’re gonna get the option to be Klaus Kinski Jr, you know what I mean?

Steve: Yeah! Exactly, there was another thing, how your character was written, you see a lot of movies where it’s like an episode of ‘Friends’, where it’s almost like Ross and Rachels ‘will they, won’t they, will they, won’t they?’, I really liked the fact they got that stuff with you and Cassie (Alexi Wasser) and your character John, out of the way, well not out of the way, but they brought it to the forefront very early on?

Noah: Oh absolutely! There’s something sorta very honest about it, you know? It was sorta, something, a rythm throughout the film that makes it very unique. We kind of acknowledge our hero and we acknowledge where he stands very early on so we can send him off on an adventure, so it’s not about the growth of that relationship as much as it is about saying ‘These are your people, this is who you’ve gotta watch, these are the circumstances and what circumstances they are man! *laughs*

Steve: I mean you had your cliché characters in there, you have to in your horror movies to some degree, but the way they handled them was great. I loved Rusty Kelly in it, he was hilarious!

Noah: Oh he was brilliant! Wasn’t he? Isn’t he brilliant man!? That role had some great jokes written for it but Rustys attitude was, that IS Rustys attitude, he really IS that guy, he really IS that attitude, it kinda is, just water off his back, he went through it, it flowed on him and it was fun to watch, where I was I was just being a square you know what I mean??? *laughs*

Steve: I really liked the bathroom scene… (Not giving away the rest of this scene, too funny to give away people… we DID talk about it but I just can’t…)

Noah: Oh yeah man, you just completely believe he’s 100% honest, you never get the hokey best friend thing from him, you just go ‘Man I know that guy, and if I DON’T know that guy I wanna hang out with him!’ You know!?

Steve: Yeah I can actually say I knew people like him, the same attitude, in highschool. For all intents and purposes I can say I knew people like the characters in Cabin Fever 2, they really did, they nailed the archetypes pretty well. You had the insecure overweight girl, the arrogant prick who went around pushing people around and had a girlfriend who was way too good for him…

Noah: Yeah! The thing I really liked about these characters was that the archetypes are there, I credit Ti for this, our director, and whilst the archetypes are there, they’re never, ever, ever falling into the cliché attitudes. The characters are archetypes, they’re stereotypes, but they’re being done in an honest way and are being done in a very authentic way and I think it’s a little bit of magic, because I dunno how you do it so you balance the two and we managed to balance the movie and I think it’s a perfect balance.

Steve: Yeah I mean I said to Robyn, one of the fine ladies who helped set this up today, that years back before I started doing interviews, back when dtdvd (dtvideo) stuff was by and large… less than fantastic, when it was generally a case of rushing stuff to vhs/dvd, it was a case of ‘is it particulary great, is it worth seeing?’ kinda thing, I think a lot of people have understood that dtdvd may be the better way to go, your target audience may be there already, just because it doesn’t go to the cinema doesn’t mean it isn’t a great movie, for instance Wrong Turn 2? But in more recent years it really seems to be changing…

Noah: Yeah Wrong Turn 2! Or in our case Cabin Fever 2! *laughs*

Steve: Yeah of course Cabin Fever 2! *laughs*

Noah: I mean I feel like, it’s very much, what’s the word, it’s very much a beacon of the new economy and the new way that we’ve taken media. When you look at how, I’m a guy who loves to go to the cinema, but I take in all my media from the net and dvd. When I see a film I respond to and its dtdvd, I feel like I’m in on a good joke, something not everyone else knows about, it’s niche marketing man,  when you release Cabin Fever 2 on dvd, you’re basically saying to the audience ‘We know you’re gonna find this movie, we know the circumstances under which you’re gonna watch it, so go and enjoy it!’ it helps on the business side to release it this way, allows it to  turn a profit, so that you can make more of them, cause when you release it theatrically, it costs so much money to promote a film theatrically, it’s a zero sum gain quite often. So I do appreciate this new school way of taking in movies, I feel like they’re being given to me personally *laughs* know what I mean?

Steve: Yeah I mean, you’re damn right, I’ve seen a lot of dtdvd movies here, like The Mutant Chronicles which I had to point my friends to, they wanted to brush it off, then they saw it and liked it.

Noah: Yeah, over here I think the stigma is quite quickly becoming imaginary. The stigma of dtdvd/video on demand, I think the stigma is going out the window, because people are realising that, something is out there, they can get it, they can get it now, they can watch it whenever the fuck they wanna watch it, however they wanna watch it, it’s empowering to the audience, it’s inclusive, it’s saying ‘hey come be a part of this movie, enjoy it how you wanna enjoy it!’

Steve: Did you watch the first one when it came out?

Noah: I didn’t watch it when it first came out, I saw it on dvd!

Steve: Did you see it like in the first few years or did you catch up with it more when you got the second movies role?

Noah: I had seen bits and pieces of it, I was aware of it, but I didn’t really sit down and study it until I became involved in the sequel and I’m glad I did, because as much as the heart of this film is the Cabin Fever heart, I think there’s a lot of pressure in being involved in something like that, you know ‘its a franchise now, we wanna make a second one, a third one, we want you to be involved!’ and all of a sudden you start thinking ‘Im lucky I didn’t put the first film on a pedestal til later’ cause you see it, and you realise, especially with my tase, I’m into real multi-hyphenate kind of shit man, I’m into stuff that’s hard to describe, stuff that’s got comedy, horror, subversiveness, exploitation, all these bits and pieces thrown together, kinda what the first one ushered in, it’s a big responsibility. I’m kinda glad I didn’t have the first one on a high pedestal when I was approached to do the second one or I woulda freaked out! *laughs*

Steve: Well you’ve done a lot of really great movies, I mean you were in Fanboys for instance? You had a part in that?

Noah: A very *small* part in Fanboys…

Steve: Well yeah but it’s still a part, you were ‘Boba Fett #2’… *laughs*

Noah: I was, I tell you, the funny quick story in that, I had worked for two producers previously on a movie called ‘What we do in secret’ about ‘The Germs’ a punk rock band in LA in the 70s, so we made this movie about them, I was one of the band members, Kevin and Matt produced it, when they went on to produce Fanboys, there was a scheduling something, I’m not sure, but it kept me from being one of the main four or five guys in the movie? These things happen, it’s part of being lucky enough to work and having a schedule to maintain to begin with right?

Steve: Ahhh ok right.

Noah: So you know it kinda went, there was a similar situation with one of their other friends they’d worked with, this guy Lou, who was Boba Fett #1, so I guess that as a laugh, they said ‘lets call up our buddies, fly them down to mexico and do some schtick for a day!’ they dressed us up as Boba Fetts, that’s exactly what happened! Something similar happened on Brothers Bloom for Ryan Johnson who I worked for on Brick, its just a nice feeling, when filmmakers who you’ve worked for, just want you around. That’s what I want man *laughs* I just want people to say ‘I want you around!’

(SPOILER WARNING AGAIN – End of the interview as well people… feel free to stop reading here… you won’t miss anything else if you do stop reading here asides a potential spoiler…)

Steve: If they were to do a Cabin Fever 3, because your characters fate was rather ambiguous to be honest… we saw the thing on his arm, but he cut his arm off, and we don’t know if say, it got into his blood for instance? Did it go through his blood system, is he actually dead… we heard the ending was reshot, rumors and such, I don’t know what the original ending was or whatever, no idea, but if in theory they did a part 3, would you be prepared to come back and do a part 3?

Noah: You know, I’m from New York and I know what it means to say it… so I’ll say it, I would be there in a heartbeat, I had so much fun, that in this world, the Cabin Fever world, that no matter what the circumstances…

*NOTE: At this point we got cut off around two or three times. Much ringing back to the mobile number frantically ensued with me trying to reconnect, finally I got back in touch, we continued talking for thirty seconds only to get cut off again… frustrating for me and no doubt Noah too! Finally we got a ‘fairly’ solid connection going… thank you Mr Telecommunications guy outside my house screwing around with the connections who screwed up the whole streets net that day… much appreciated!

Noah: Wow I never realised I had so much power! Never realised I was espousing so much awesomeness I was fucking up cellular connections intercontinentally so to speak!

Steve: The only one who’s done this before was Zack Ward from memory… *laughs*

Noah: Ahhh well it’s very good company to be in then! *laughs*

Steve: Well thank you very much for today it’s been fantastic! Thank you very much for speaking to us today.

Noah: No problems man!

*At this point the damn interview dropped out… but Noah was so fantastic he emailed me himself personally. Noah was fantastic. Easy to talk to, brilliant personality, one of the best examples of when everything just clicks and fits together in an interview and I’m really looking forward to checking out more of his work and praying that he comes back for the (hopefully) inevitable Cabin Fever 3!

Let me finish up with a little passage from the email Noah sent me, it’s only one line from a longer email, but getting something like this, when he really had no reason to send it, just shows how genuinely awesome Noah Segan damn well is:

“I was forwarded a message from you and wanted to reach out myself to 
let you know it was a pleasure to talk to you.”

Now, remember, Cabin Fever 2, if you’re into fun movies, if you’re into gore, surprisingly well developed characters, into something that little bit different? This is definitely that movie. It’s not the disaster quite a few sites are rumouring it to be. Do yourself a favour, see the movie, grab a pizza, grab some beers or coke, whatever, get some mates around and have a kickass time watching it. That’s how we watched it, that’s how we enjoyed it and that’s how you should too.

*BE WARNED WE DO TALK SOME SPOILERS… NOTHING MAJOR… EXCEPT A CAMEO*

On his Cabin Fever 2 Cameo:

Rider: It’s so funny because we were doing interviews about other stuff and they were like ‘we hear you’re in Cabin Fever 2!’ and its like ‘Ah… Im not supposed to talk about this…’ the worst was when they brought me onto stage at Fangoria with the rest of the cast on stage right after we finished filming and I was literally filming for only 1 day, and they’re treating me like a regular cast member during the Q&A… and I’m like ‘Maybe we should hand that over to Noah or somebody who was there for the whole movie…’ now that the sort of secrets actually out, people kinda know I don’t really live that long…

Steve: *laughs* Yeah I kinda think if people took into account how long the victims kinda last they could’ve figured out how long your character was gonna last in part 2!

Rider: *laughs* Yeah right! Right!

Steve: But it was a pretty good cameo, I mean Lions Gate set me up with the screener, I was sitting there and I saw you come up and I’m like ‘Oh cool that’s the guy from part 1!’ then you’re stumbling across, and I’m thinking ‘Oh that’s pretty cool…’ and then well… (see the movie, I’m not spoiling the rest) But your scene, was great!

Rider: *laughs* Yeah!

Steve: Just your scene, it was great. I mean, I spoke to Eli the other day (Eli Roth), and his other movie, Hostel, when they said Jay (Hernandez) was coming back for part 2 and then… you saw both part 1 and 2?

Rider: *laughs* I only saw part 1… not part 2! *laughs*

Steve: Aaaah ok… well then I won’t spoil his fate in part 2 for you *laughs*

Rider: *laughs* Ahhhh ok I have a feeling… It’s ok, it’s a classic little twist, but you know when I read the script for Cabin Fever 2, I was like ‘that’s just too funny I have to do this!’ it’s the perfect way to introduce the tone of the second one! I mean in the first one we spent 45 minutes introducing the tone of the first one, it’s like we’re gonna spend you know about 45 minutes getting to know the lead characters, there’s a plot, the second one, its just absurd, let’s just splatter people, it’s clearly gonna go to a whole new level of craziness and (gives away exactly what happens to him, I’m not saying what happened.)

Steve: Your scene in it was *really* reminiscent in it, I don’t know wether they meant it or not, but it really reminded me of the original Robocop movie?

Rider: Yes!!! No we talked about that because when the makup, they already did all the molds and stuff and when we showed up on set they finished all that makeup and Im like ‘Half my face is like completely melting off!’ and that’s exactly what we were reminded of, was that Robocop moment cause, yeah, I don’t know if Ti intended that or if it was subconscious but we talked about that, yeah at least in the makeup department we talked about it. It was like, it was pretty over the top, definitely different to what Eli did in the first movie, Eli in the first movie was far more subtle, it was much more like, if people had the disease they looked normal, they were just bleeding or itchy, they were just *makes grunting noise* whereas in the second they look like the Toxic Avenger! *laughs*

Steve: *laughs*

Rider: I was telling the Producer Lauren, you coulda just put someone else in my clothes, my right eye, that’s the ONLY thing recognisable on me, that’s what you’re paying me for! I mean yeah I’ll take it! Just so you know, I don’t have any lines or anything!

Steve: *laughs* So you’re basically the worlds first ‘Right Eye Model’!

Rider: *laughs* Yeah I like that! AND I got top billing!

On peoples initial reaction to Cabin Fever:

Rider: I’ve always said there were two moments in the movie that were litmus tests for wether people would either love it or hate it. I think that those were like, the only two reactions that people had for Cabin Fever, ah, and those were the moments that Guiseppe, comes on as Deputy Winston and he’s doing such a wierd character, and the voice… and the little mullet, the mullet, the karate, the pancakes screaming blonde kid… those are like, very bizarre moments, and our reviewers literally either singled out those moments and said ‘That’s the funniest most wierdst thing I’ve ever seen, that’s what makes this movie great!’ or ‘That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen and that’s what makes this movie terrible!’ I mean I love those moments, I was there for the genesis and the conversations of them and it was really, it really came from the excitement that was built on the set, mostly generated by Eli of course, and his vision, but a real willingness to have fun and not take ourselves so seriously, and be like, ‘this movies gonna like reinvent horror’ and a lot of the movie came out of Eli’s passion for the films that he loved as a kid and that I loved. We would all talk about that, you know like ‘do you remember when horror movies had tits, blood and looked dirty, grainy’ and all that, those were all conscious choices on Eli’s part to really try to capture all that, there was a sense of excitement and a childish wonder about what we were doing, you know, there was no studio involved so Eli was free to make those kinds of weird choices that *I* think have served to aid the movie really well in establishing itself in the cult movie-dom.

Steve: And it has, Cabin Fever did it for sure, it did it within a couple of years easily. The thing I loved was you had the character of Winston by Guiseppe, you had his character in Cabin Fever 2, have you seen it yet?

Rider: Yeah I did I saw it at the premiere in Austin it was great! I only read the script once because (SPOILERS GIVEN I WONT TRANSCRIBE IT) it reminded me of, the first part reminded me of the old 80’s highschool movies like Teenwolf, I LOVE that shit, in a way it reminded me of a callback to the old style Highschool movies, I LOVE that, the look and the feel. You know, it even kind of feels like he’s out of one of those movies, a character caught in one of those old love triangles, its ridiculous and that a flesh eating virus descends on this particular ground of people… I love that! *laughs*

Steve: Yeah I was saying to Noah that I loved how they skipped a few of the conventions, how they got a lot of it out of the way, like ‘I love you, deal with it.’ They got it out of the way quickly. Cabin Fever part 1 did it too, the tone of the movie jumped all over the place in a really good way. It was a comedy one moment, then a serious horror the next, then a complete psychological mindfuck the next…

Rider: It was tough too, because when we first showed up on the set for Cabin Fever there was a lot of debate for that stuff, because Joey Kern, thought that he was in a comedy, you know, because his part is a comedy more or less, a lot of comic relief and the way he dies? I showed up taking it more as a straight forward horror, I didn’t see that much humor in it, and in a way its both of those things and it jumps back and forth constantly like Elis brain jumps back and forth constantly, and it’s one of those things where I think a lot of people don’t like that about the film, but in a way it kept it from being more mainstream but it’s also what secured its place, jumping around and, I love that stuff, I think that those are the movies that last and stay with you and throw you for a loop and you’re never quite sure what kind of movie youre in. When you’re an actor and you’re not sure how much to play it, when we’re aware of how funny a lot of the stuff was gonna be we didn’t quite know, should we wink at the audience, is this a SCREAM type movie, are we self conscious type characters where we know we’re in a horror movie? Eli was like ‘No, no, we’re play this real. Everybody play this real.’ In a way we were all in our own films. I was in this sort love movie, one were I was gonna get the girl, Jimmy was in one where he was in a frat boy comedy movie, and it works in a way, cause we all have our own little narrative arcs, it all boils down to this flesh eating virus screwing up everyones little movies! It all works in its own little way!

On reuniting for the commentary for the Bluray:

Steve: Now Eli was saying he got four out of five original actors to come back for the Cabin Fever bluray commentary? Were you one of them?

Rider: Oh yeah!

Steve: How was that reuniting after like, seven or eight years to redo the commentary for it?

Rider: It was great! It’s always great getting together with those guys. I mean I shot another movie with Jimmy DeBello, called ‘The Penthouse’, it’s going to DVD sometime soon? He and I did this movie, but he didn’t come to do the commentary but that’s probably a good thing cause he goes a little crazy which would’ve kept us from being a little focused…*laughs*

Steve: *laughs*

Rider: It was great seeing the directors cut too, because that’s the way I love the movie, I’d seen the directors cut a few months before, at a screening in LA, I’d seen it, and I talked to Eli, and that screening may have been a lot of the impetus for Eli to push Lionsgate to release the directors cut on Bluray. I mean I really think its a better movie, the endings better, there’s a couple more bizarre dream sequences which really help to, I think they help contextualise a little bit of the bizarre stuff, they happen early on, like when we put Jordan Ladd in the shed? Like some of them are bizarre flashes, of stuff that hasn’t happened yet? I think it sets the tone, that yes the movie is bizarre, that it’s more ‘David Lynch’ than it is ‘Scream’? Really, the difference between the Directors and the Lionsgate cut, that which was originally released, which was around four minutes, which was just enough for me, cause when I saw the movie in Toronto? I was excited, I loved it, but when I saw it in the cinema? I walked out thinking ‘Somethings missing…’ then when I saw the Directors cut I felt ‘THATS the movie I signed on for… THATS the movie I love.’ I’m really glad it’s finally seeing the light of day. Plus there’s a whole section of this wonderful monologue that’s finally seeing the light of day, it originally got cut in half, it’s like ‘Wow there’s all these lines that got cut out’, it’s not like they were integral to the plot, by any means, but it brings my character full circle.

=================================

Rider was great to talk to, just as Noah Segan was, just as Eli Roth was. Three awesome people who I had an absolute blast with. I really hope I can catch up with them all in the future to discuss their projects again. I still can’t believe this is the guy who I used to watch on ‘Boy Meets World’…

So this brings our Cabin Fever interviews full circle, I’d like to thank Eli Roth, Noah Segan and Rider Strong for their time, all of them were fantastic to speak to. Cabin Fever and Cabin Fever 2 are both fantastic movies and I really have to say, if you haven’t seen them yet, you’re really missing out. Get your ass out there and watch them pronto.

Bring on Cabin Fever 3 and more Deputy Winston!!! (And hopefully a certain someone else if you’ve read the interviews…)

Cabin Fever: The Directors Cut is only available on Bluray and is out now.

Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever: Unrated DVD is out now now.

Steve: Hey Mr Roth

Eli: Hey Steve!

Steve: Would you prefer Eli?

Eli: Yeah of course! Mr Roth makes me sound like a Professor of some sort! *laughs*

Steve: I’m down in Australia so I’ve had to get up really early *laughs*

Eli: *laughs* Yeah I hear ya! Hey I just watched Road games the other night!

Steve: That sounds familiar… (at this point Im searching my memory, the movies title is very very familiar… I know it… what movie is it again…)

Eli: A great Ozploitation thriller!

Steve: I know that one! I haven’t seen that one in years! Haven’t seen that in a long long time!

Eli: Yeah it’s from like 81 or 82, it holds up terrific, great film!

Steve: Yeah we actually watched the documentary that your friend Quentin Tarantino was in, the Ozploitation one…(sidenote: The documentary is called NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, very highly recommended!)

Eli: Oh yeah! I’ve got a copy of that one, I haven’t watched it yet.

Steve: So we’ve called up today in regards to the Cabin Fever bluray today that you’ve got coming out soon…

Eli: I’m really excited about the bluray! It’s the original cut that’s coming out, it hasn’t been seen since 2002 on the movie circuit, this was the movie that got sold, then the studio recut it so its a little different from the theatrical version. Iwatched it recently with an audience and it brought the house down. There were more scares, more funny stuff, theres more character stuff that originally didn’t make sense that makes sense in the cut now that’s answered. We went and we did a new transfer, a hi definition transfer, a new remix of the sound, it sounds beautiful. I recorded a new audio commentary with four of the five cast members, put in a photogallery, I really wanted the fans to get their moneys worth. This is not gonna be on dvd. This is only gonna be on Bluray! It’s only gonna be available on high definition which is how it should be seen, you’re gonna see every drop of blood and every morsel of flesh!

Steve: The first time I saw Cabin Fever, I saw it on Aint It Cool News, I remember seeing it advertised.

Eli: Yeah, they’re one of the reasons we got it sold. Before the Toronto film festival Harry said ‘I have a feeling about this movie, don’t go home you gotta stay for this film!’ we were the dead last movie, out of 350 films and he said ‘Don’t go home, you gotta stay!’ and people did. Harry was a huge reason that the movie sold. Actually I remember I went to the Melbourne movie festival with it, where I met Leigh Whannel, he said he wanted to write horror movies and we chatted in the lobby, then I saw him like six months later we met again and he said ‘Hey I’ve got this new movie called SAW and I’ve got this ten minute short that I think they’re gonna make a feature…’ and I remember in Sydney I did ‘Popcorn Taxi’ and I really had a great time, the Aussie dvd I think that’s on there. Icon did a great job with releasing it down there.

Steve: So you’ve managed to do new commentary for it, you’ve done this just for Bluray. Not enough people are doing things specifically for bluray.

Eli: Oh yeah! Seven or eight years ago when we were first doing the dvd transfer, this guy said to me ‘You know this will never ever look this good again. This is a $20,000 monitor you’re looking at, color calibrated.’ And he goes ‘It’s gonna be years before this stuff comes to home video.’ And we actually couldn’t even find the master tapes. LionsGate really supported me. We went to the original negatives and retransferred it, we actually remixed the sound and it’s actually great the Directors Cut never came out on DVD, because now people will actually see the movie with all the photography looking its best, the production looking its best, the performances at their best, the gore at its goriest, I wouldn’t WANT this on dvd, it would take away from it. The only people who will see this are the people who are true film aficionados who have a bluray player and a high definition monitor.

Steve: Oh for sure, I know I’ll be buying it. I mean I’m eager to see part 2 for instance, I know you didn’t have anything to do with it, but still. I mean, I love these kinds of movies. I loved the Hostel series as well, I had a great time with them.

Eli: Oh! Thank you very much!

Steve: Ah, mate, I really did, I thought they were great movies. I really got a bit of a giggle with cabin fever, the whole Roeper situation. His comment about it. (Note: We won’t go into it here, it’s a few years old, the situation, google it for yourself ) I think too many people base their opinions on what critics say.

Eli: Sometimes, theirs reviews and theirs criticism… I think Harry’s a smart critic, Devin Faraci’s a smart critic (CHUD), Brad Miskef (Bloody Disgusting), they’re guys who will point something out or find something you never thought about. You don’t want to just hear praise. The audience is the ultimate judge of your film. You can feel it if it’s working or not in the room, you don’t need a critic to tell you that, but it’s great when someone points out something about your work that you never thought of and makes a connection and gets you to think of it in a different way but I think that those people are so far and few between.

Steve: I think when some people take a critics opinion and judge a movie without seeing it…

Eli: Yeah but I think its less and less now, they generally judge it by what their friends say. Movie criticism is down to 140 characters. If someone goes on twitter ‘this movie sucks!’ that’s what their friends listen to. You’ll know by 3pm Friday if a movies working by what people are saying on twitter, and I think thats good! I think its gotta make people step up their game, make them make better movies, you can’t fool people with a trailer and a big opening weekend and wait for people Monday morning to say it sucks, now people write what they think, put it up and blast it to all their friends! So when you make a movie like Inglourious Baestards it can work for you, work in your favour. People come out and they go ‘Baestards is amazing, Baestards is great!’ like, it was the number one tweeted most thing that weekend! So it can work for you or against you, but you’ve still got to make a good film.

Steve: Oh that’s true! Cabin Fever, look at it, my mates and I were going around going ‘That was friggin awesome!’ going on about the scene where Rider goes to…

*At this point my son walked into the room, having woken up, carrying two, yes, two Nintendo DS’s. Limited time on a phone call does not wait for any 6 year old… Mario is apparently more important than Eli Roth to my son! So I asked him to wait for 5 minutes… Eli Roth actually heard me ask my son to wait for 5 minutes whilst I spoke to someone on the phone… dear god I hope he doesn’t think I’m a bad dad now lol! At least my son can now say he was brushed off playing DS with daddy for a hollywood director eh?

Steve: Anyhow… sorry about that! He’s gone now to play his DS! Haha. Anyhow as I was saying, the scene where Rider…

Eli: Yeah the finger scene!

Steve: Where he puts his hand on his girlfriends leg and…

Eli: Oh yeah and he gets more than he bargained for!

Steve: Yeah and that was a fantastic scene. We laughed and giggled about scenes like that for ages.

Eli: Great! That’s the idea, I wanted a film people would watch with their friends, that they’d quote after and you know, just become part of an inside joke with your friends.

Steve: Oh and the scene with the kid who did the karate out of nowhere!

Eli: Oh yeah! He came in and auditioned and did it out of nowhere, I was as shocked as the audience was in the audition room when I thought ‘How can I not! None of this is in the script and ALL of this is going in the movie, this is just so wierd!’

Steve: *laughs*

Eli: How could you not! That’s what I learnt from David Lynch. He really taught me to see what’s infront of you. Don’t get married to whats in your head, see whats in front of you, cause if you’re only thinking of whats in your head you might miss something beautiful. And this kid came in and did this karate and I thought how can we not have this in the film, it would be a crime not to have it in the film, and here we are today talking about it!

Steve: It was your own little Deliverance moment, they have the kid with the banjo, you’ve got the kid with the karate! *laughs*

Eli: *laughs*

Steve: Just very quickly, Thanksgiving, is that definitely gonna come to fruition?

Eli: Well, I’d love to but I’ve gotta finish the script first! Right now I’m focussed on my scifi film Endangered Species, that I’ve been writing. Truthfully, I’ve been having so much fun with all this awards season stuff with Inglourious Baestards, you know, I don’t wanna miss it! After Hostel, I, I went straight into Hostel 2, I didn’t stop to enjoy the success of Hostel 1, I was so focussed on getting the next thing going, I realise how rare these moments are in your life when you make a film and people love it, it’s a very rare and wonderful thing. We worked for a year on the film, so we wanted, it’s nice to sit back and enjoy it. There’s another few weeks of that, I’ll finish Endangered Species, then the script for Thanksgiving. I realise I can only make one movie at a time, I’d try to make ten movies at once, but it’d never work!

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Eli was fantastic. I must admit I was starstruck on the phone, Eli’s a personal favourite of mine, I loved his work in Cabin Fever and Hostel, whilst I do think Hostel was better than Hostel 2, I still enjoyed Hostel 2 immensely, it’s like saying I enjoy a texas t-bone over a porterhouse… I love both, I just prefer one over the other… can’t wait to see how Endangered Species and Thanksgiving turn out! Cabin Fever Bluray is out now.

(I’d write it in proper date form… but being Australian and most of you guys American, the way we write it, it’d confuse the shit out of you…)

-What was the genesis of “The Seventh Moon”?
EDUARDO SANCHEZ-  Well, I had an idea about staying locally.  I live in Maryland, in a rural area, and I wanted to make a film around here, basically a small town story with limited characters and a very low budget.  But I couldn’t come up with anything dangerous.  Everytime I went to the country, I thought, I don’t wanna do rednecks, kkk, zombies, any of that stuff, so it kinda died, because I couldn’t find the creature I needed.  Then a filmmaker friend of mine wanted to make a film in China, to see if I could come up with anything to make in China on a budget.

-What was the production’s relationship to Ghost House?
ES-  It was a completely independent film that we shot for low budget in Hong Kong.  We completely finished the film and it premiered at Fantastic Fest, which is a great festival, by the way.  We got multiple offers, but Ghost House was the right place.  We liked what they did with their great films, we loved the idea of being involved with Sam Raimi.  We were all greatly influenced by “The Evil Dead.”

-Most DTV titles tend to lean in a horror genre direction.  What dimension do DTV movies bring to the horror film?
ES-  I think that generally speaking, horror films do better on video than in theaters.  Most make money in theaters, and some of them fall through the cracks, but most of them find their audience once again on DVD for the most part.  A lot of genres are like this, certain movies are a little too esoteric for theaters than on DVD.  For us, regarding audiences watching the movie, we would have liked to have a theatrical release, but we’re just happy to get the film out there.  The best way to watch it is to watch it at home with some people over.  “The Blair Witch Project” was originally developed for home video, and it kinda blew up, and we still think it’s best served seeing it at home.  Unless you have Brad Pitt or a big name director its really hard to get theatrical.  A movie like this on DVD, it becomes a lot more lucrative.  It works as a business model really.  For our next film whether we’re aiming for theatrical or not, for theatrical its important to get a distributor involved early on.  It’s very difficult for indie films to get wide theatrical distribution, often it’s a one in a million shot.  My thing is, as long as I can keep making films and people keep watching them, I’m fine.

-How did you cast the film?
ES-  I always wanted to work with Amy Smart.  We tried to get her in my previous film, and I always wanted to work with her, so I met her in LA, and she was very down to earth, we offered her a role and she accepted.  Tim Chiou, we cast in the US through a casting director.  Dennis Chan was cast out of Hong Kong, we thought it would be easier than casting someone out of the US.  I showed Amy some of my favorite actors, and she really liked him.  She thought it would be very realistic they would be married, that there was a spark there.  Tim, I thought was great, he brought a goofy edge to the duo that I really liked.  The most challenging thing was casting all the creatures.  It’s kind of the Asian society, the Asian norms, people are more conservative over there than they are in the US.  Finding fifteen guys to run around nearly completely naked was difficult, but once we picked the guys we liked, they were very enthusiastic.  I feel bad for those guys, because its very cold in Hong Kong, and they were wearing very little clothing, but heavy makeup.  But they brought so much energy to the roles.

-What happened after The Blair Witch Project, specifically with the Don Knotts project “Heart of Love”?
ES-  The Don Knotts thing was kind of a joke, because we wrote Knotts into the script, and someone put it on IMDB, but there was a “Heart of Love,” we were gonna go balls to the wall and make a softcore snuff.  We took it to Cannes and we presold the movie all over the world, and that’s how we came up with the budget.  For a bunch of different reasons including us getting so much money from Blair Witch, and Artisan being more interested in another Blair Witch, they held things up.  You can imagine where we were after that movie.  Our lives changed.  The movie fell apart after two years of preproduction, we spent a lot of money pre-visualizing.  After that I semi retired, I got married, had a kid, moved from Orlando to Maryland, and tried to have a normal life.  Four or five years later I read a script called Probed, I sent it to Craig and Rob, my producers, and that became my second movie, “Altered.”  Post-Blair Witch, we got so many offers from others studios, but we were so tired of Blair Witch, tired of those dark places, so we veered away from it.  We probably should have taken a lot of money and made a terrible stupid movie, it would have been an experience.  I have no regrets, I’m happy where I am, and as long as I can make a living making films I’ll be happy.  I’ll always have this ridiculous monkey on my back, I’ll always have that to be proud of too.  Even to this day people are still excited about that

-What’s your next project?
ES-  Dan and I are talking about doing another Blair Witch project, but its pretty much out of our hands, so we’re coming up with an idea we can pitch to Lionsgate.  I’m working on a new script called “Posession” that’s going to be low budget, back to basics, not completely like Blair Witch but similar, a small film with a few characters and really creepy ands scary, with a little bit of first person like in Blair Witch that pushes the boundaries of that technique.  We did a goofy web series called paraabnormal.tv, it’s a web series. We spent $500, and it’s a comedy about ghost hunters.  We’re getting good reaction from that, and continuing to write scripts and hopefully the economy will get a little better.

-What is the message “The Children” is meant to convey?
TOM SHANKLAND-  Well, I think what interested me was kind of the contradictions of modern parenting.  People would ask me about kids or about the fear of children but what really got me interested was seeing all my friends being parents and having kids and watching how modern middle class parents have a hard time dealing with their children.  Do they spoil them, or do they let them run wild?  I kinda thought it would be an interesting thing to take characters that are familiar and put them in this horrible situation to see how they deal with how violent these kids can be.  To try to get into the zeitgeist thing about parenthood.

-Why are children so damned evil?
TS-  In life, or in the movie?  (laughs) I think there’s something profoundly mysterious about children, and they exist in a way where they haven’t been civilized yet.  If they feel like being aggressive, they’ll be aggressive, if they are scared they’ll scream.  I think there’s something quite scary about something that’s not self aware or has no self control.  Because they’re so tiny, they seem to be very vulnerable, but because of this complex, they can be the dominant force in a family.  A child can reduce the family to tears.  It tends to be hugely disturbing to raise and try to civilize a child during the moments before they become socialized beings- it’s a little scary.  It’s a situation filled with unruly, forces.  That’s part of why the idea of a kid in a horror movie can push buttons in an audience, because people say that’s not what we wanna think about. I think its preoccupied civilization for centuries.  I think about this shit too much, I need to do romantic comedies

-Did you find yourself trying to avoid the clichés of killer child movies?
TS-  I always trusted my instincts about this, because I wanted to make the kids like kids I knew, so I based them on kids in my life.  Obviously, I love those kids, but I wanted the characters to be ordinary, have a sort of truth about them, to be plausible.  I knew going into the horror area, they weren’t going to be super powered or zombies, or possessed.  I always knew they would be ordinary kids who have become completely violent towards their parents.  Another thing is when it goes into horror, you don’t see much of the kids onscreen.  We don’t explore their psychology too much.  Also, I watched loads and loads of killer children movies, and I figured with the DP what kind of attitudes we should use.  “The Innocents” is one of my favorites, and the kids in that are very ambiguous, you never know if their evil or ordinary.

-What was the production’s relationship with Ghost House?
TS-  It completely happened without me even knowing.  We took it to AFM sometime this year, it wasn’t even a finished print, and the distributors were desperate to get it into the market, and the guys at Ghost House really loved it.  They were very passionate and I’m very excited about that.

-What’s your next project?
TS-  I’m kinda working on a few things.  Probably another genre film.  I went straight from my first film into “The Children,“ so I’m taking a breather.  Maybe in my next movie one less person will die until I make a movie where people start coming back to life.  It will be a great film of truth and beauty!