Eli Roth - 2007

I love love love Eli Roth! He is my favourite horror director and Hostel is one of my favourite movies of all time. Eli has received a helluva lot of flack and criticism and has more or less been "blamed" for inventing "torture porn", something which, from reading Eli's (often hilarious) blog on his Myspace, really frustrates him. I am of course on his side. His critics need to grow up, chill out and get a life and realise that it's only entertainment. Yes, call us sick, call us twisted, but some people actually find celluloid killing and torture as entertainment. It's nothing shocking, especially in this day and age (Iraq anyone...) and most of us are intelligent enough to not read into horror movies. Some of you like cheesy Disney musicals, some of us want to have the living daylights scared out of us. It's a personal choice at the end of the day and one which does not make me feel like going on a killing spree.

Anyway, I digress! Back to meeting the man himself. He was in town to promote the release of the "Hostel II" DVD with an instore signing at Virgin Megastore. There were a fair few fans by the time Matt and I turned up and we took our place in the queue behind a rather odd-looking fan with a weird comb-over (it was weird because this dude couldn't have been more than 25, and he had a comb-over!). I'd say we were about 10th in the queue. I have to admit that I was feeling a bit teenagerish and I tried to keep my gushing under control when Eli turned up. As I had known all along, the man is super hot in he flesh! And really nice and normal.

Anyway, Matt was given the task of taking my picture with Eli since he didn't really have a clue who Eli Roth was (he has seen "Hostel" and "Cabin Fever" but he is not as geeky as me to find out who the director is). I brought along my "Hostel" DVD and obviously I had to buy "Hostel II" for the instore signing, which I was going to do anyway. Eli was really sweet to his fans and very obliging, especially when it came to picture taking, although I think he was quite taken aback when a little boy, who couldn't have been more than 10, turned up with his mother and who had obviously been allowed to see the "Hostel" movies despite being underaged! As the boy and his mother were walking away, Eli yelled after him "Don't stay in school and do drugs!" (before any of you gets your knickers in a twist, Eli was joking as I don't think he was comfortable with a little kid watching his movies).

When it was my turn, I am embarrassed to say that my opening line was something along the lines of "Eli I am such a big fan". I know, I am a complete dork. But the rest of it went quite well for a fan/director meeting! For reasons that cannot be disclosed, I told Eli how Matt and I had come to the signing, to which Eli was touched by and even said, much to Matt's delight, "You've got a good boyfriend over there" (FYI, Matt has already tried using this as a defence: "Oh, I can't be wrong because Eli Roth said I was a good boyfriend").

I then said that I really enjoyed reading his blogs and that I found them hilarious. Eli said he was always pleased to hear when fans have read and enjoyed his blog. Then I made reference to a recent blog which contained an amusing Spice Girls anecdote and I jokingly asked him if he had gotten his tickets to the Spice Girls' reunion. Eli's reply was no but he admitted that if he was actually given tickets, he probably would go and see them (it turns out Eli may be a closet Spice Girls' fan as evident by an interview he gave with The Guardian. See under the question "What is your guiltiest pleasure?"). Obviously during this time Eli had signed my two DVDs (please note the "XOXO" on "Hostel" hahaha):




Eli then took a picture with me and man, is he tall!


And being the nice guy that he is, he even suggested that Matt should have a picture too (you know, for being a "good boyfriend").


Before my time was up, I managed to slip in one more thing. I said to Eli "By the way I've burned all my Hostel stills!" (which was a reference to a recent debate in the House of Commons on the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill where an unresearched and ignorant comment was made about "Hostel II" by Charles Walker) to which Eli laughed and pointed and said "Good!".

So there you have it folks! Eli Roth is genuinely a nice, down to earth guy and it was AWESOME that I got to meet him!

Mission accomplished