Art inspires art nowhere more than on the Internet, where mash-ups, reblogs, gifs, and all manner of secondary content are generated daily — and often hilariously — in the little nooks and crannies of the World Wide Web. This one, however, hits the sweet spot, fusing our recent obsession with the late-night wars with one of the hottest movies of awards season — gloriously: (more...)

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. ELI ROTH: My Decade (more...)

my decade Excerpt from the forthcoming book "All the Gory Details" by Eli Roth.  Not for reprint without author's permission. Republishing excerpts on websites is fine. Printable version here. The nineties, while fun and wild at times, were spent in film school, then working on various film sets from 5:30 in the morning until 11:00 at night getting coffee or standing out in the freezing cold asking drug addicts in Tompkins Square Park to kindly keep their voice down.  In short, they sucked, by 1999 I had moved to Los Angeles and finally got my first directing break, co-writing, directing, producing and voicing a series of animated shorts with my friend Noah Belson called "Chowdaheads."  The shorts were to air on WCW Wrestling's #1 rated show "Monday Nitro," but the weekend before they were scheduled to air the CEO got fired, and the shorts were put on hold.  I had put every waking minute of my life into these shorts, and now they were just sitting on a shelf because of a regime change.  I was told to "sit tight" and "hang in there," but by the end of 1999 it was clear nothing was going to happen with them.  It was time to move on. (more...)

Exclusive! Here is another scene from "Ronna & Beverly," a pilot made for Showtime earlier this year that got a last-ditch airdate — which creators Jessica Chaffin & Jamie Denbo turned into a chance to catalyze a veritable movement to get it seen (and, hopefully, loved). According to IMDb, it's up 628% in popularity over last week, so that should help. Backstory here. What you need to know: Ronna Glickman and Beverly Ginsberg are two Jewish divorcees living in Boston and promoting their new self-help (and self-published) book, "You'll Do A Little Better Next Time: A Guide To Marriage And Remarriage For Jewish Singles." In this scene, Ronna takes Beverly to the hospital to check out a maybe-lump in her breast, and will get her seen NOW, dammit. As for Beverly, she maybe likes babies a little too much. Oy. I know these women and am pretty sure you do, too. (more...)

video So! "Ronna & Beverly" aired last night. Did you watch? Did anyone? Did the army of Twitter followers of comedy tastemakers like Rainn Wilson, Mindy Kaling, Joel Stein, Paul Feig, Rob Corddry, Rob Riggle, Paul Scheer and Diablo Cody — remember to set their DVRs? Anyone subscribing to the theory of Twitter as a cross-platform influencer should be watching these results, because if Ronna & Beverly's ratings exceed the norm, then it's because of the instant campaign launched by stars/creators Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo, producer Jenji Kohan and director Feig, and their lightning-quick marshaling of influencers online. It just might say a lot about the possibilities for marketing television — not to mention the power of niche communities. It's an interesting test case, one that anyone who cares about this stuff should keep their eye on — even Chuck, with its army of internet fans, had time to build fan-love with multiple episodes and an NBC-sized budget. If Ronna & Bev can do it with a pilot and an army of their UCB pals, then that is a big deal. (more...)

What do you do if your TV pilot finally gets made — in the middle of a media meltdown and the worst recession in years? And what do you do if it isn't picked up, but at the last minute, randomly, gets scheduled to air? In the olden days (read: a few years ago), you told all your friends to watch it, crossed your fingers and prayed. Today, you send the word flying through Twitter, Facebook and every other social medium you can think of — and suddenly, you've got a movement. That's what's happening right now to Ronna & Beverly. (more...)

I have never seen a movie by director Eli Roth. That's not entirely true, I have seen clips from a movie by Eli Roth, since I saw (and loved) Inglorious Basterds which not only features Roth as the infamous skull-cracking Bear Jew, but also features his directorial handiwork on the film-within-a-film Nazi propaganda movie "Nation's Pride." If you haven't seen Basterds you might not get this but honestly, what is your problem? It's a GREAT movie and you should go right now and buy it on DVD, which coincidentally is now possible because the DVD came out today. But anyway, back to Eli Roth. So, I have never much liked horror movies, and his particular brand of movie — dubbed "torture porn" by New York's David Edelstein, which has stuck as the name of the genre, with him at the head — seemed like a clear miss for me. (Never mind that I have since learned that he is involved in the remake of the horror movie that pushed me over the edge back at a sleepover party when I was 11.) But then I got into a debate about it with a good friend, who bitched me out for taking such an extreme position without actually having seen his movies. She had a point. So, what I have seen: Inglorious Basterds (which I loved and in which he was not un-handsome), a commercial he did in support of PETA, the "Thanksgiving" trailer (okay, admittedly through squinted eyes — but hey, I turn off CSI too), an interview where he talked about having Quentin Tarantino over to his family's house for Passover, his interview with my friends Ronna & Beverly at the UCB in Los Angeles, his Twitter feed, and "Jew/Not A Jew" yesterday with Harvey Levin. So — my interest in highlighting him on Mediaite is an educated, informed and evolved one. Also, maybe he can introduce me to Til Schweiger. (more...)

Connoisseurs of Saturday Night Live will remember the classic sketch featuring then-host Tom Hanks featuring fake game show "Jew/Not A Jew" ("Sponsored by Feldman's Kosher Pickles. You don't have to be Jewish to enjoy Feldman's, but it helps.") Connoisseurs of this blog will remember that I am slightly conflicted over horrormeister Eli Roth, who makes movies that I could not bear to watch but was pretty hot as the Bear Jew in my 2009 favorite movie, Inglorious Basterds, and has some interesting childhood art. And connoisseurs of unflinching celebrity coverage no doubt know what I'm writing about already because they've already been to TMZ.com. So! All this brings me to "Jew/Not A Jew," an impressive four-part showdown between Roth and TMZ founding editor Harvey Levin, also a Jew. (more...)

What's not to love about Thanksgiving? For one day in the middle of the week (a fact which used to fascinate and confuse me as a child growing up in Canada) an entire country of 300,000 million people stops everything they are doing to sit down, stuff themselves with food and drink, and watch football (I'm told...about the football party anyway). So yes, that part's great. The part about being crammed into a house with various your family members may or may not be great depending, but that's where the tryptophan and liquor come in! (more...)

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?) (more...)

Melissa Lafsky is a friend of mine, but she's always seemed strange to me for one reason: She loves horror movies. Loves them. Thrillers, slashers, creature features — she's seen all of them, probably a bunch of times, and certainly without her eyes covered. I, by contrast, mute the sound when some stupid slasher commercial comes on during The Daily Show (seriously, Comedy Central, it's ENOUGH). I fail to see how a movie called "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" could be remotely appealing, let alone beget any sort of sequel. And yet, horror films are big box office, and always seem to find an audience. Which explains why Melissa's new column, "Horror Chick," has become such a favorite over at The Awl, where she writes with gusto about dismemberments, flayings, hangings, stabbings, impalings, devourings, eviscerations and the odd demonic possession. The tagline from her column is "Melissa Lafsky really likes horror movies." In honor of Hallowe'en, I asked her why. (more...)