The Aughts (and The Aught-Not- Haves)

April, 2007

“Grindhouse” opened and for the first time, Tarantino and Rodriguez have a commercial failure.  The premiere was amazing – the film brought the house down.  I loved the movie, I was so proud to be a part of it.  We were all stunned when we saw that it only made $11 million opening weekend.  This movie had cost nearly $70 million dollars.  It was a disaster.  I tried to console Quentin as best I could, but really what could you say?  Nobody went to see it.  We still went to Cannes that May, and once again I got to walk the red carpet at the Palais, even though I was tangentially involved in the film.  I had a cameo in “Death Proof”, but I was also there to do press for “Hostel Part II” which was opening in a few weeks.  I was able to convince Sony to send me to Cannes to get all my European press done at the festival, and from there I went to Germany and did more press, before returning to the U.S.

I was starting to get tired of filming scenes of people screaming in dungeons chained to chairs.

In late May, 2007, I got a terrifying wake up call.  The one copy of “Hostel Part II” I had given to Lionsgate was on the internet, complete with the name of the person I had given it to burned right there onto the copy.  I mean, there was no question where it came from, but the big question was how.  What I got were mainly thin excuses, nobody really was telling me what happened, and the one who suffered the most was me.  By the time the film was released they had tracked nearly 2 million downloads.  I went on MTV talking about how piracy was going to kill the film industry, and people used it as an opportunity to say I was “whining.” I had just spent over a year of my life working on this film and due to carelessness people were stealing it.  As if it was their right.  “Hostel Part II” opened to less than half of what the first one did opening weekend.  They also released this film opposite summer blockbusters like “Pirates of the Carribean 3” and “Shrek 4”, and “Ocean’s 13,” which I was very much against.  I said we’d get drowned out by summer blockbusters, and we did.  The final box office tally was $35 million worldwide, and the film only cost $10 million so we were still very much in profits before the DVD came out, but it was not what we had hoped for.  People said I was “blaming piracy,” but I knew it did not help.  Plus the people who pirate are high school and college kids, which is the audience I make movies for.  The whole thing was a fucking debacle.

I was over it.  People started jumping all over me, I suddenly became the focal point for all the backlash against violence in movies.   Any movie that came out, no matter how shitty, if it was violent, I was mentioned in the article.  I had set myself up for all this by putting myself out there as someone who unabashedly loved gory movies, but this was the first time I experienced an overwhelming amount of negative press.  The film had its supporters, and only recently has the film been revisited and praised (Entertainment Weekly recently listed “Hostel Part II” in their Best 20 horror films of the last 20 years).  But at the time there was nothing I could do but just ride it out.  I needed a break anyway.

I dropped every project I was developing. I needed to reconnect with my friends, my family, myself.  I realized that in 20 years I had never stopped.  Ever.  I had never taken a vacation.  I had no concept of what to do with free time. People would often ask me in interviews what I liked to do in my spare time, and that was the only question that stumped me.  I realized I didn’t know what else to do.  I had all this success that I had never let myself enjoy it.  I was tired of arguing with everyone all the time, always fighting about the script, posters, the trailers, the cut, my ideas, the ending – all that.  I took a break.

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.