The Aughts

Eli Roth has had quite a decade. From young director struggling to get his first feature in the can to hotshot horrormeister pushing to the edges of the genre to the bat-brandishing Bear Jew in Quentin Tarantino‘s epic Nazi revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, Roth has come a long way in a town that at times can be about as gentle as that dungeon in Hostel.

As we head into awards season — and what has already been a triumphant outing for the much-nominated Basterds — Mediaite asked Eli to reflect on the last decade and the sweat, tears and, yes, blood it took to get here. Luckily for us, he was as forthcoming with his story as the Bear Jew is with his bat — and shared all the gory details. Here they are.

my decade

Eli Roth remembers the last decade, and his trip from struggling film school grad through horror’s new hotshot through to Inglorious Basterds and the infamous Bear Jew. Here are all the gory details.

I have never seen an Eli Roth movie. It’s not by accident — even just knowing that he’d pioneered the particularly gruesome horror sub-genre of “torture porn” would have been enough to keep me away, even if I hadn’t seen a Hostel 2 poster. (Ew. What is that?)