Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum - Eli Roth

Episode Date: July 28, 2020

Eli Roth (Hostel, Cabin Fever) comes back on this week to share the limitations in trying to get a movie shot during our current world environment. Eli also opens up on his exhaustion from always trying to satisfy others in order to reduce his self imposed guilt. We talk about how the last few months have been a summary of his film career, how social media feeds narcissism, and his experience with greats like Quentin Tarantino. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm just trying to do ads for you. Just, I'm just a billboard now. Is that that? That's what this is. Dude, I'll tell you what. It just relieves a lot of stress because when you're not here, you know, and people who listen, it's just like, you know, I got to make sure that's in focus. The other camera's in focus, I've got to make sure this is recording.

And while I'm talking to someone, I'm like, they're going, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm looking to see if it's recording. And it stopped. once on Grant Goostin. So it happens and I understand it, but it was like, it's just good to have you here and you're kind of taking care of business. Yeah. I'm here watching it all.

Guys, I want to say thank you to everybody that's listening. Got some great news. I can't mention it right now. What a fucking, but it's great, man. It's really good for the podcast, I think. I'm excited about it. So it's coming. And I want to thank all you listeners out there.

If you're listening and you're not subscribed, please subscribe. It helps a show so much. Write a review. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Inside of You podcast on Instagram at Inside You Pod on Twitter. Follow me at the Michael Rosenbaum. It really helps the show. And my patrons out there.

Hi, guys. Hey, how are you? That's Ryan. Ryan's here. They love Ryan. They love Ryan. You guys have really kept the show afloat. And I say this all the time to you.

I say it on the Patreon account. Patreon's awesome what it is. If you don't know what patron is, it's pretty much if you want to support the podcast extra and get extra goodies and there's merch that I send and there's inside of me where they get to ask me questions and I create characters to ask me the questions. Like I think I'm in drag this week.

Just, and it's a lot of fun. And we do these private YouTube lies where I play music and they have a dedicate, they have a request list. Request, what's it got? Request line. Yeah. And it's just,

It's a great community. People are becoming friends. So you can go to a Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And the other one is very fitting for today's episode. The other Patreon is called, Where Have All the Good Horror Movies Gone? We just started, don't have a lot of people on it yet, but John Heater, Napoleon Dynaman and I,

we talk horror movies, and where have all the good horror movies gone? And we do a review, and people come on Zoom with us, and we talk, and it's horror and fun. And so join that one if you want, and support that. but I just want to say thank you again for supporting the show and Ryan for always delivering great episodes

seriously I couldn't do this without you this week July 30th in Forma I'm doing a virtual con so you can get zooms with me you can get zooms with me and Tom Welling Superman you can zoom with both of us we do a Q&A it's going to be a lot of fun that's July 30th and thank you everybody for

tipping and watching and enjoying and winning prizes for the Rosenbaum and Dancing show we did on stage it and we just performed this last weekend and it went awesome and we did a bunch of Zooms and so we'll be doing more every month we're going to do a stage at Rosenbaum and Dance and we haven't figured out a freaking name so if you can come up with a name for two guys who need a name for a band Dance of the Roses he doesn't like that I said dance and roses the dance and roses yeah and then he was just like no it's stupid he's like Shut on.

Anyway, let's get into it afterwards. We'll talk more and all that stuff. But this is a good friend of mine for many years. He got really famous directing Cabin Fever and hostile movies and so many movies. I mean, he just knock-knock with Cana Reeves. He was Bear Jew on Glorious Bastards. He's constantly working. He's constantly working on himself, which I love, which you'll hear.

And it's nice. And I, at the end, I was, I really had, I didn't, I didn't prepare myself that much. I don't, not that I prepare so much anyway, because I just like to talk and get inside. And it just, it was, it was, it felt good. Ryan liked it a lot. I approve. You proved. All right, let's get inside of you later off.

It's my point of you. You're listening to inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum. Inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum was not recorded in front of a live studio audience. So look, I haven't talked in a while. We kind of keep in touch where it's like a text, like seeing how each other are doing. I know you're crazy. I know you're busy. I mean, are you, I mean, you're one of those minds that always you're doing so many things.

If you go to IMDB Pro or IMDB, depending, you look at this and it's like the list. I'm like, holy shit, in development. This guy's got, this guy will be working until he's 100. I don't know if it's, well, yeah, I don't know if it's good or bad, but I do have a weird, I've talked, this is something I thought a lot about, you know, if the lockdown went another six months, I would just be writing and writing and writing. It's been, my brain, I always have like 50 things I want to do, but you're the same way. You want a podcast, you want to play music, you want to act, you want to produce, you want to write. Like, we just, we're also from a generation where you can do anything. You just have to push yourself. You know, we weren't told you can only be one thing. we were from that wave of okay you can start directing your own shows you know if you're on a show you're going to start directing them you're going to start producing them you're going to start so i always i was also like no one's going to let me in i better just keep i better have so many ideas that i'm doing it's a writer-producer director that way one of them will go you know because if you put all your eggs into one basket oh which would happen on hustle too and then the week before it comes out it leaked on the internet and you're like leaked on the internet it was all over people were buying those DVDs weren't they on in Mexico and Brazil for a penny yeah it got leaked and I know how it got leaked and it was a huge bummer and it still did well but it was like oh I just spent a year my life on this thing and now it's

just gone just out there for free so that was a big wake-up call like okay I want to have you know start doing diversify like doing television shows producing movies having stuff that can always kind of keep going. And now I want to write books. I want to do animation. I want to do kids stuff. I want to do more horror. I want to do producing. So you just kind of, I find that sometimes if I'm overdoing it, I'm doing it to like distract myself from dealing with whatever reality I'm not facing. And so I really have to filter if this was the last thing. I always say like if I died tomorrow and this was the last thing I did, would I be proud of it? You know, and stuff like history of horror for sure falls in that category. Like every episode of that show, I'm so excited,

even though it's not a big moneymaker. I'm just so excited to just talk about horror movies and interview people. And then other movies like Borderlands, the thing I'm doing for Lionsgate, it's like a giant, it's so many pieces. It's like mobilizing an army and coronavirus has just made everyone confused and a little bit unsure of how to proceed. So they're sort of stumbling a little and then holding back like okay we're going to shoot here wait a minute the virus has spiked we can we can if if like there's going to be enough available crew or now there's the scramble for the three or four safe countries where you can shoot um you know which is like australia germany new zealand so it's it's just a weird time go back for a second the my question

is i'm going to rewind a few minutes and you said you know and you start and then you start wondering am I keeping busy just am I doing these things just to not deal with yourself yeah not deal with yourself that just rang true to me I talked to my psychiatrist this morning and uh you know I was telling them that I know I'm doing all these things and I think you know and I think a lot of people they just keep as busy as they can so they don't have to deal with their inner shit and I wonder if how healthy is it to just keep being busy and not dealing with shit or always dealing with shit. I talk about this in therapy a lot, too, that, you know, enthusiasm comes and goes,

but inspiration, you got to go after it with a club. Like, you just got to, and I read Stephen King's book on writing, where he talks about, he's like, the little muse is there in the house, you just got to knock and let him know your home. And I always try to write five pages a day. That's my thing. Even if I don't know what's going to happen. And I'm like, I put it off.

And when you sit down and you just start. doing it. Sometimes it comes out in 45 minutes, sometimes it's four hours. And a lot of the times I get that too, where you're just like, I don't want to churn. I don't want to read someone's script, a draft of a thing I'm working on or, okay, I'm co-writing five different things. We have like the treatments. And we ping pong it back and forth. Then I wait. I'm like, okay, sometimes I just can't deal with this because I, in terms of writing, I can only really focus on solving these problems for the screenplay. So I'll kind of line it up in like in a render queue. Like, okay, I'm going to get through this script, then I'm going to get to that. Then I'm going to get to that. And I schedule it out

a little bit. But I do think that there's a, you know, there's, there's the phrase, what's the Buddhist phrase? Chopwood, carry water. Like, no matter who you are, you got to get up every day. Doesn't matter if you've won the Nobel Prize. Doesn't matter if you're an Oscar winner. It doesn't matter if you're rich. But like, you wake up, you have to do the work. Chop wood and carry water. Like, you have to. And no one's exempt from that. And all you're doing is delaying it and turning it into more of an issue than it really is. But I think creativity and writing, it's like a muscle. You just got to flex it. And, you know, look, we all get burned out. But I think that setting a schedule and setting dates, sometimes what I'll do is, like, if I,

there's a treatment for a project or a TV thing or a pitch we're going to go out with, I haven't read it. I haven't dealt with it. They're waiting on my notes. They're waiting on my rewrite. Because, you know, I was so excited about it two weeks ago. And now I'm like, oh, do I want to deal with it? I'll set a meeting with everybody. Then I'm like, oh, fuck, this thing is in 12 hours. I got to sit down and do it. And then I do it. And afterwards, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is great. This is easy. This is not, because if we look back now, you know, I was a freshman in college. It was 30 years ago this September. And I've been trying to write every day from that time, you know, I graduated film school to turn writing. So for over

25 years now, I can say, oh, I don't know what like, you know, I'm not like an amateur. Like, I actually know a lot more than I give myself credit for in terms of it. It's just 30 years of just watching movies, breaking down stories and writing screenplays. So my memory it's like when you're a kid and you go to some lake and it was so deep but now as an adult you go in and it's not that deep at all it's like your memory of writing is like oh god this used to take me forever but now you can actually do it much much much faster because you've just spent years doing and you're better at it yeah well what is it though like when you talk to your therapist like besides that i mean what do you got to be you're probably really hard on

yourself i mean you are hard on yourself what is it that you just don't like that you just go god i wish i could just do this better why can't i do this Why do I always react this? Why? I'm impulsive. I can get irritable. I can, you know, I can be selfish. I could be, you know, it's all about me.

I can be, I can get all those things. And I get really upset with myself. Even when I lose my patience, I'm like, you know, and I'm not a yeller, but, you know, my dog, 98% of the time, I love him. But there's that one time we're like, what the fuck? And then I'm like, why'd you yell with the dog? Well, maybe because he's deaf and he can't hear me. But why did you yell at the dog?

It's like a default mode. Like we all have these default modes of things that we know works. Like I knew that I could be like a charging bull to get something done. And I didn't like that about myself. But I knew if I went into a room with 10 studio executives and people that were arguing against me telling me it was like a challenge that I knew I could win the argument or with like 100 crew members that I could run it like through. sheer force of will and that this kind of attitude that helped when you had no money and you just had to charge force on willpower on cabin fever and at times on hostile and then it's kind of putting myself out there as making these ultra violent movies like come at me and then defending movies like

I had this kind of combative attitude that I don't think was very healthy I think by the end of hostel too you know I found myself getting into a pattern where I didn't like that I had to be like that I don't want to have to. I'm not, it's not my nature. I'm a pretty, I don't like yelling. I'm a pretty nice person. I'm pretty reasonable at seeing, you know, people's positions from all sides and able to, and I'm one of my skills that I think I'm good at is I'm able to really get the best out of people and get people to do stuff better than they ever, you know, kind of believing, believing in them and pushing them in the right way to, like, achieve something great. But that said, you know, I'm like, how can I do this without, how do I be a leader without having to raise my voice,

without becoming that guy and that voice and the director where I start talking like this and then, you know, just going, okay, I don't like that. Like, how can I do that by not being reactive? And I think that, you know, one of the things that I look at with, obviously, you know, making movies, like our careers are so beyond our control. But making movies, it's like a way of building a world and controlling that world because you want to tell the story and you want the story to go like this. But when you're in this world of chaos that we're in right now, I mean, the world is constantly in chaos, but especially now, I can just, I have two choices. I can sit around and be depressed. Like, why aren't we shooting? I want to get back to work, which is what

everyone's doing? Or I go, what do I need to learn here? I need to learn that, like, if there's a nuclear war, if everything ends, like, I need to wake up and be creative and have something to do. And I need to move forward. And I need to, it's just not be, like, it sucks. My girlfriend's in Europe, and I can't see her. And there's nothing, there's like nothing you can do about it. But we're just like, we have two choices. We can be depressed about it. We can like every day going, oh, this sucks. We can go, hey, what are you doing?

You drawing, you're writing, are you creating? Like, what's, you know, try and just get to know each. Like, just go deeper. It's like there is a thing where I felt like I got credit for like guilt, like working myself to the bone to like not eating, not sleeping, living in absolute poverty to like suffer for making the movie that I, I thought that unless I was under incredible amounts of stress and duress and exhaustion and

like, then I wasn't going 110%. And I realized that a lot of it was that I didn't know what I was doing or I'm learning stuff that I, you know, couldn't pay people. So I was doing 15 different jobs. And I thought that like, you know, it's like you don't get credit. There's no extra credit for the guilt. Like you just have to, that there's a way to be creative. And it's actually when you're kind of accessing your highest self and being in that flow when you can kind of, you know, it's just a challenge of how good are you at tuning out all of these crazy things that are happening to us and just staying creative. Do you ever go back and go, gosh, you know, Eli in college or, you know, Eli hanging out at my house on Hill Slope that I rent it out that had rats in

the ceiling or something? Do you remember that? They had rats in the bathroom and watching chowde heads and your show and rotten fruit and playing guitar. There was a little bit of a stress, but it was more simplistic. It was more, there wasn't this weight on us. Now, for you, is there always a weight on Eli? Is there always a weight that even when you feel like you're just laid back, there's still that essence of got to do this, got to do that. Can you chill? It's something, that's what I've really spent the last kind of five years. And I didn't start therapy until about five or six years ago, because I couldn't. And I was like, something's wrong. Like, how can you get everything you've ever wanted in life and everything you've dreamed of

and still be left this feeling like you're underwater all the time? Like, you're constantly letting people down. Like, you always owe someone a phone call. Like, you're always owe notes on the script. Like, this person was totally depending on you for this project because you overextended yourself and you don't want to let them down and don't want to let yourself down. And then you're just like, what am I doing? Why am I living in this constant state of guilt until you really just have to, you know, there's all the other books I read that subtle art of not giving a fuck. It's a lot of things. Yeah, I read that. For me, it's all about, and the Ryan Holiday's books,

but there's, you know, The Obstacle is the Way, just kind of enjoying the process. And there was a purity about that time. I will say this, like, look, we've known each other a long time so that we both all kind of migrated out from New York at the same time. And we met through Matt Ballard. And, like, you know, we think about there's like a group of actors and writers and, like, we all kind of came out of film school.

It was like comics, directors, actors, writers. And kind of by the end of like 8899, like the kind of the group, the main bulk of the group, it all kind of relocated, you know, Tom Lennon, like everybody kind of moved their quest. And I remember you were like a year ahead of me and I kind of met you in Ballard, a whole group of people. And we were all kind of around the same age.

We're all like in that, you know, kind of mid-20s trying to make it. And what was great was we had no expectations. There was nothing to lose. Like, I remember meeting Michael Jan bowling. Like, I've vivid memories. Yeah, we all bowl. And he made this movie called Dairy Queens. which was now like they they're really i can't remember the title the the denise richard's beauty pageant

movie but at the time it was called dairy queen and i just thought like oh my god like you got to direct a movie shot on film with denise richards it was the most incredible thing and you had zoe duncan jack and jane and you would recognize everywhere i would say this you were the most generous like you were the guy that you know had the most amount of like success out of any of us like you had a television show that was on tv and a contract and this is pre smallville it was like you could afford to pay for bowling like you could afford to rent the house like that to me was like beyond my wildest dreams and doing chowderheads and doing rotten fruit like it was sort of being done for no end it was you're doing it just to do it like we were just having fun like the way

we would all go bowling and it was kind of just cell phones there were no video it was like barely like the no key of phones like we weren't I mean the only evidence that I have is from my like my film camera when I took photos from that like you did to bring a camera somewhere and shoot the you said you just said no expectations That, to me, keeps, keeps ringing in my head. That's when you're early in your career, we're early and we're just, we're excited. We don't know what, there's nothing really to lose. There's just, you could only go up.

And so even when I got on a show, I was like, okay, but, you know, this is, nobody really knows this show. It lasted for maybe a season and a half, but gosh, I, and then all of a sudden you get something, whether it's hostile or Calvin Fever or Smallville or whatever, and you get to a certain level and all of a sudden now you have this pressure why why because you have to be better than why do you have to be better than smuggle why do you have to be better than hostile where the big thing starts to make you crazy is that you start to look at you know okay what did I want I wanted horror movies I loved it and then you get in a bigger arena with hostile and I'm like okay

this is amazing now I have like a legitimate global hit movie then this acting opportunity comes up and I was like I'm going for it I mean the amount of ridicule I got of like like suddenly being the director of Hostel now going to be in the Tarantino War movie. It was like, and I was like, great, I'm going to do this too. And now you have these other things. Like, do I want to go into this? It's like, well, not really. That was an amazing experience and I love acting, but I really want to put, like, what do I have time for?

Okay, producing here's Riza has this movie idea. Let's do this Kung Fu movie and this last exorcism. And suddenly you look back now and all the kind of people whose projects who are involved in your projects that you helped along the way. It's like, it's kind of an amazing thing. But I just feel like, I still feel like I'm just getting. going. I feel like, you know, I never try to think, oh, if I'd go back and do that again, I just go, okay, I could continue doing this for another 20 years, and I'd be splitting myself into five different ways. Now I just want to focus mainly on directing, really. But it's

taking you this much time to mature and mature, he says. But it's true because what you start doing is you start going, you will literally, it's just, all you're doing is unlocking happy. Like, when people go on Instagram and they're like, let me just check my likes, and then they're depressed 15 minutes after. they either didn't get the validation they want or the dopamine hit wore off or someone saw something nasty and you're like wow i just let it's like it's like david lynch says your creativity is this beautiful reservoir and you're just letting sewage leak into it when you go and look at that stuff and it does i'm very good at lying to myself like oh i'm doing this for this will be for press this will be like

i got to do this i got to you know like the followers like let me do it's nonsense it's all like you know unless that's your job as an influencer it's not really for me anyways it just becomes a time suck. And I go, this isn't making my writing better. I'm actually just using Instagram. I don't want to replace the distraction of many projects. I don't want to have like replace it with social media. I was like, it's the same behavior. It's I don't want to get inside my head. So what do I need to do? I need to put down my phone, play some music, go for a hike, get in my head and just sit down and do the pages. Or sit down and do the pages and then be okay walking away from it. That's the other thing is that I've realized that I don't have to sit in front of

computer for nine hours to feel like I had a full day. If I get everything done in an hour, I'll put it down, think about tomorrow's scene, and then let it percolate. And that's one other ideas come to you. Also, there's this weird period when you have an idea where you're like, so excited about it, you don't care. Like, like, history of horror was like, I don't care if nobody watches this show. I just want to interview these guys because Toby Hooper died. You know, it was like, they all died. Yeah. Persia of Gordon-Lewis died. Toby died. West Craven died, like all these people. I mean, we got so lucky to get to know.

You know, even like Carrie Fisher, like you think about the people that to us were these gods that in our adult lives became like real friends. I know you were like, like I met Carol, wasn't close to there, but like, you know, Wes and Toby and these people, I met Hersh Gordon Lewis. I knew all these guys and heartbreaking that when they go, their stories go with them.

So I was like, you know, it's just to me, whenever I do that, like, and it's funny now because the season two episodes are coming in, and I'm doing the voiceover from home. It's like there's nothing that gives me a deeper satisfaction than watching an episode that's done and goes, this existed because I kept pushing

and we got everyone excited about it and I bothered everybody. I like nagged and enjoyed and begged everybody to do it and now we have like this awesome one hour thing about, you know, body horror and killer kids and my top 10

weird movies, like just all that kind of stuff. So I think that the is you just have to remember I it's like we all have that flow within us like we can all access it and the trick is really just cutting out your most insecure parts to be your biggest self because the social media like the validation that stuff it's all fake it's not real you know the real the only thing that really matters is sort of what you push yourself to accomplish I mean and that's with you with it's music and writing your album and doing your podcast You're not doing it with the end game of, if this doesn't become the number one podcast, I'll be depressed.

It's like, the beauty is in, wow, what an amazing conversation. I, like, actually took, it took this, but we sat down and we had like a really cool conversation and now we understand each other and we're actually going through the same things. It's funny you say that because I'm listening to it and I'm going, there's a lot of truth in what you're saying, mostly truth. Sometimes it's a little different because, you know, when I think of Instagram, I think, you know, and Bryce helps me out with this with social. media and stuff but like you know if i'm going to play music social media is the way to go you could tell your fans you could tell your friends you could tell everybody so there's a certain element that it's it's it's really smart but when it's that's all it is and you're obsessing that i get this many listeners look if i was if i wasn't an actor i don't think i'd be on

instagram if yeah if i was getting three comments and like eight views why am i why why does anybody care what i'm saying nobody does so when you start to influence and you have you know hundreds of comments or you know views and things like that you know then you could use it as a tool to spread uh you know uh i don't know goodwill or uh yeah i mean i don't think the tool itself is inherently evil or right right i think that my use of it becomes narcissistic sure mine does too don't get me wrong yeah yeah well and i and i think that it's it's just about tendencies. You know, some people go on Instagram every day and this doesn't even occur to them. It's not an issue. That's not what they're. And I understand that like, you know, Kevin Hart,

there's a lot of people that have built very successful careers and used social media to like turbocharge it. For me, what is success? It was, I was never, weirdly, I was never focused on making money. I mean, I had plenty of opportunities to do big movies or much more lucrative things that I just thought, do I want to spend two years of my life doing this? And I was more interested to kind of go to Chile and see where that led or go to China. I just was like, I just wanna see what happens. Okay, let me go on this adventure.

I was more about like, it was never whoever dies the most toys wins. It's like how many weird, cool adventures can I squeeze out of one lifetime? And tell stories about it and go into the Amazon and go, like I'm sort of an unconventional filmmaker in that respect. And it's not that I don't like those things. It's just that that was my driving motivation

was always just more curiosity to see what else is out there and what else can I learn and how do I challenge my expectations of how things are and my ideas of other cultures. I want to go there and live there. And a movie was just a great way to go there and live there and get over fears and like doing the shark diving. I'm now finishing a documentary on shark finning. It's like I think of so many things like, oh yeah, I also am like almost done with a movie. You better send me that so I could use my Instagram because that's important. This is exactly where it's good. Like, I mean, sharks are literally keeping oxygen pumping into the planet. I mean, they keep the ocean clean of all the sick and dead fish

and half our oxygen comes from the phytoplankton in the ocean. And without the sharks, and you're seeing it now, they're getting smothered in algae because they don't keep the system imbalance and keep away the predators that should be eating the algae. They're not there anymore. So the algae blooms suffocates the air, beaches uninhabitable, you can't swim in it. So it's like when you see the movie and then what it's for and why we're killing 100 million sharks a year, it's just, it's so, I've had this knowledge for years now, it's like it's infuriating, but that's going to be one where social media is totally appropriate, where we, it's the only way that people are going to respond to companies. Absolutely.

sponsoring these sharkill tournaments. I just find that like, unless I'm promoting a project and I'll often have my assistant do it, like I start to go down that rabbit hole because if you think of it, there is that like 13 year old, you know, for me, there's a 12 year old fat kid that no girls liked that you're just sort of like, why is that, why is that person still popping his head up every now and then wanting to get some kind of validation when everyone was laughing at them going, you suck. Like, there's a part of you that's still there. And you just go, you know what? I can't fight it. I can't suppress it. You just go, give it a hug. And you go, I don't need it. Like, you acknowledge it and then you're good. Isn't that something? It's like you have to parent yourself.

Like that inner fat kid at the bar mitzvah. And I remember I couldn't wear, they said, Mrs. Roth, your son's not a large. He's a husky. Like that and not being able to fit into a suit, getting a fat kid soup from my barmezla was like, wow, I never thought of myself as bad. You never, that's the thing. I don't know what kind of therapy. I'd love to hear someone who go, oh, you know what? Look, there are obviously a lot of forms of therapy that could help with things like that. Because it's amazing.

I've talked about this all the time, no matter how much somebody will say, you're great, or they love you, or they love your work, or they did this. And I love it. there's still that insecure, stressed out, smallest kid in his high school that got picked on that no one listened to, that felt completely there, no matter what you do, no matter how big you get, you just have to keep it and check and you have to talk to it. You have to go, you have to say, hey, this is when you're young. That's not you.

You have to sort of like, almost like talk to yourself saying you can't feel like this. Look what you've done. you're not stupid you're not this you almost have to read it you like talk to yourself over and over again to get that as like as an adult when you're like oh you idiot you blew that that was so stupid why did you do that you're basically like if you saw a little kid if a five year old kid came in the room and you went you idiot why would you do that you're so stupid like how would that affect the kid but we're doing that to ourselves and you have to think of yourself as a kid in front of you going don't worry about it like it wasn't meant to be this is it like you grew up man have I grown

like instead of beating yourself up about the past and your behavior you go yeah you know what i had some growing i grew up look how look you you sort of look at it at the accomplishment of look how much i've evolved and look how much i've grown yeah i feel lucky that we got to live in a time where a lot of our mistakes were not recorded you know we got oh my god i'd be in prison what constitutes a mistake now was like what but also seeing teenagers do some dumb thing on TikTok one night at their friend's house and they say something stupid or something ignorant and now it's like they're being kicked out of colleges for it. It's like we won't let you in. We won't let you hear. Like that people are actively seeking to ruin other people's lives before they even

have a chance. Yeah, we didn't experience that. We never had that. It was like, you know, that culture of, you know, you did something wrong, like giving, not even helping people be better or improve or improve their self, but actually being like, let's remove them from society or not even lambasting. It's such an inhuman practice. And it's also makes the assumption that they're the only ones who are doing that. So it's like nobody wants to admit that like, which is human behavior, which is the point of life is you grow, you think you're doing the right thing. Sometimes you willingly knowingly do the wrong thing, think you get away with it or think it's not as bad. And you realize you're kidding yourself or realizing you hurt people in certain ways with your own

selfish behavior. It's like, that's the point of growing. So I think now I just look at like, yeah you know what we're coming up on like like 50's not that far away shut up fuck off but you know what i'm good like i feel like we've i've accomplished a lot i've a lot left to go and now i'm really just going to do what i love and not stress about it but if you start comparing yourself with the person who has the bigger house the person who has more money the person because that's so rewarded in our especially in the movie business yeah i don't care about that anymore i used to care a little bit now i now there's there's something else for me now I really look. You know what? This is weird. I just talked about this. I can't wait until I'm 55 or 60 because then you could say, I could retire. I don't have to keep doing this if I don't want to. And people won't go, what do you mean you retired at 48? You're not even a billion. Why? So now I can say, 55. I could do it, right? Pension kicks in at 60. I can take a penalty. And no one could look better. Oh, he retired. He's going to go play golf in the fucking Sarasota.

So there's part of me that just like, look, well, I go crazy. My friends seem to think so. You got to keep doing this. You got to be creative. I don't know, man. There's almost like that little kid in me that's just like, hey, Michael, I just need someone to tell me sometimes, it's okay. You could just do nothing or you could just do this.

You don't need to be in the spotlight. You don't need to make a lot of money. You don't need to live in a, I have a baby pool out there. I bought it's two feet deep. It costs $300. I just needed to take a cold dip in something because I was hot. Right. I don't know where that came from.

But that's all you know. need to be happy is what you're saying is that like sometimes you just go out it's like when you get to a point where you're buying things or consuming things or having things and you realize that what makes you happy is just having a great dinner with friends you're like okay this is this is it I mean I could go you know you can only sleep in one bed at night and often the bigger the house the more it echoes your loneliness if you're lonely you know you just start thinking like what really matters is being with the people you love and creating work you care about and also there was a time when that kind of adulation was cool in our eyes because getting adulation in the 90s and the 2000s was very hard like you really you had to be on a TV show you had to make a movie that was the only way you would get that public adulation now it's gotten by your phone now you can get it by doing a funny video that goes viral and you can get like that's where the adulation like what used to be impossible to access

now isn't. So it's not special the way it was to us. And consequently, it doesn't matter. We realize how little of that matters. Like, what really matters is that you made something that you believed in and that you cared about that you thought no one else could do or the way you created it, the way you did that character, the way you did, it's like, it's there and it's for all time. Let me ask you this. Do you look back and do you think, because some people will like think everything they've done is great. I'm not one of those people. I will look back and say, wow, I could see that was terrible. That was not good. That was, you know, I'm very critical on myself. Do you do that? Is it hard for you to sort of like, you know, have you ever loved someone and people

hate it or actually didn't like something that people really liked? Yeah, I think that everyone is self-critical to a degree. I'm certainly not delusional where you think it's perfect. But what's so interesting is like I look back at Cabin fever and I don't think I could have done that better. I was thinking, wow, that's where my brain was when I was 22. I was 22 when I wrote it. And then I was 28 when I shot it. And I was like, yeah, this is like a document of my mind of what it was like in 2001, 2002 when I was shooting it. So when I, or 2930, like when I watch Hostel, I go, I just remember that I only had three hours to shoot that thing. We had to turn it into one shot. And that's cool. It worked. Like, like, I'm proud of myself that I went,

even Green Inferno. I go, I could have done that better. This scene didn't turn out I wanted. This was rush. Like, I should have given myself more days, but I went to the Amazon. So that was fun. It was like, I made it, I wanted to make a modern, I wanted to make a movie that would make people talk about Cannibal Holocaust. You'd say that. Of course. Then people in the Italian newspapers were like, Green Inferno is such utter trash, unlike the masterpiece Cannibal Holocaust. And I had dinner with Regerra Deidato, the director, and we were laughing because that same newspaper had called for his head 40 years earlier.

Then there's a rip-off. Like, people sort of go back and they, now the original one is brilliant. It's not at such a good anymore. So I was like, I just wanted to make the movie that people would hate so that they then go and praise your movie. I love that. So we were laughing. But, you know, like, like, I look at Knock Knock and I remember I kind of gave myself

a day for the first like eight pages of dialogue. So I really wanted to focus on the night scenes and this. And I never got the opening family dynamics. And so in the edit, you're just like kind of racing through it. Like, what I've noticed is that if you shoot a movie in order and you're starting with the first scene, you're kind of rusty. Your crew's getting to know each other. You get in the groove after a couple days.

In the groove. So, like, what you should do is go back and reshoot the zone. You're like, oh, man, if I had done this now, I'm in the zone. I found the characters. We got our, like, we know kind of the language of the photography we're using. The lighting's faster. I wish I could go back and reshoot that. So what I try to do now is knock knock was the first time I felt like, look,

I was really proud of the movie because I felt like after the jungle I wanted to do more like just a chess match like this kind of piece three people in a house kind of movie even though it was very different it wasn't like a bloody

I was like I just still wanted to show that I could make make tension with dialogue and how great was Keanu working with? I love Keanu I love working with him love him um Eli I love it

would you like me to go through the okay great great um yeah sure okay yeah we're like we're trying to show him how to use FaceTime or like something he's like okay we're like no Keanu you got to like okay but how would they see me if the cameras I'm like no you the camera seeing you

because it films he'd never done it that is amazing and then there's the story of Reddit that was like Keanu Reeves gave all his profit money from Matrix to his stunt team and it's like Keanu Reeves gave away $75 million to the stuff it was the top story on Reddit and we're like hey Keanu that was so nice he was like what do you What are you talking about? And he's like, we're like, yeah, you're the top story on Reddit

that you gave all your money to your stunt team. He's like, but that's not true. I was like, I was nice to them. I gave them gifts, but like, and what? 75 million. Like, he's like, I gave him $75 million. Like what he goes? He's like, can't we just call Reddit?

We're like, no, it's Reddit. It's a message board. He's like, well, email them. Email them, read it. Tell them. I'm like, no, this is great for the movie. We're letting this rumor flow. He's like, Eli, you got an email Reddit.

I'm like, Keanu, the rumor's out there. There's no stopping it. Like his sort of total lack of being involved in technology was kind of beautiful. And I think that like, so I don't look back and I go, there's always stuff of like, you know, I could have done that better. I'm going, oh, we pulled that off or that didn't work out as well. But everything's, you just go, you know what? I'm just going to do it better on the next one.

Like everything. And the next one, you're trying 10 new things that you haven't done before. It's like, okay. Now here's a challenge. Now here's that. Now like, and every movie, I always feel like I call it a roller coaster where it's just like when you go to six flags, let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. And the bar comes down, I go, you're like, wait, wait, shit, this is a bad idea. And you have to look confident.

And you're like, make it stop and get me, I give it to that. And then it starts going down the hill and you're like, well, no choice now. And you're screaming. And then by the end, you're like, I want to do that again. That was awesome. Inside of you is brought to you by Quince. I love Quince, Ryan. I've told you this before. I got this awesome $60 cashmere sweater. I wear it religiously. You can get all sorts of amazing clothing for such reasonable prices. Look, cooler temps are rolling in. And as always, Quince is where I'm turning for fall staples that actually last. From cashmere to denim to boots, the quality holds up and the price still blows me away. Quince has the kind of fall staples

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have saved a total of $500 million in canceled subscriptions. With members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features, cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Download the Rocket Money app and enter my show name inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum in the survey so they know I sent you. Don't wait. Download the Rocket Money app today and tell them you heard about them from my show. inside of you with Michael Rosenbaum, Rocket Money. Are you one of those directors that will? Because, you know, I see it.

I've seen it where, you know, they're doing something, and you can tell it's terrible. What they're doing is not working. And that's human nature. And I don't care who you are. Spielberg does it. There's a moment where it's not working. And they could put that game face on like they planned every moment.

And they're like, yeah, let's do this, let's switch this. Do you stay confident or do you kind of, do you, are you one of those, go, hey, come here to your DP, let's talk about this. How can we make this better? Like, I'm a little lost. I need a little guidance. Do you ever need, like, are you humble enough where you could just ask for advice from people that you, you know, you're the director? So is that difficult for you to do? Um, no, it depends what you're asking. I think that you always have to have a plan, even if the plan changes. Like, you, you've got to be the leader. Like, you've got to go in there and go, this is how we're shooting the scene. And my,

the first thing I like to do is just go and rehearse with the actors, walk through it so that, like as if no one for no one but us. And Quentin taught me that. He's like, you know, the DP gets his time. Everyone, they get time to light, the sound guy get their thing, the word, like, this is my time with the actors. I don't care if the whole crew is standing around.

We're about to do a scene. I want to run it until we're running it like clockwork so everyone knows where everyone is. And then you run it for the crew and you want to actually saving time in the day because everything, you can't do that with a kid. You got it like with a kid, you have such limited hours.

You got to kind of, okay, you're going to stand here. You're going to go there. But like, you know, when you have Jack Black and Cape Blank, it and we're rehearsing and we're walking through and could you sit here and could I stand there and like I work it out with them then I'll bring in my DP and we'll have a lens we go just run it guys we just kind of look at while they're performing the scene oh we could start

in this you know so you can have an idea like the kill scenes are like that's like clockwork like I got that figured out by by the way do you ever get intimidated by have you ever honestly been intimidated by an actor where you're like it almost made you feel like a little boy again like you're like fuck fuck like I got to win them back or I got to or they were you know you upset them? Well, there's an actor that I worked with that everyone legendarily was like, this guy's tough. He's very temperamental.

There were a couple of actors like that. But I just found that if you approached it from an intelligent place, they knew that I knew movies and that I knew screenplay and that new character and that I knew acting. Also, almost getting burned to death in Tarantino's movie earned me a lot of respect with actors because they're like, okay, he's not a post. He's not like, I'm not some diva director. Like, they saw me in Inglorious Bastards.

They saw me with a bath. They're like, okay, he hit the gym. and at the end he was almost like burned in that fire which we all really were so they're like okay he's doing like real shit in that movie that I respect so he's not just at least I approach it as like I'm not just I know what I'm asking I understand what I'm asking of you because I've been in that position I'm not saying I know better than you but I'm saying when I'm asking you to do this I understand what I'm asking so if they don't want to and they're telling me no telling me no you just got to like be you cannot sometimes they're blustering for other reasons

And you're just like, do they not know the scene? Have they forgotten something? Are they worried about their look like? Do they not want their like neck showing? Are they worried their arms are flabby? Like, where is this coming from? So I always try to look at what's behind it. Is this a real note?

Are they really concerned about this? Or is there something going on where they feel like their eyes are puffy and they don't want me shooting them in close up because maybe they had too much wine last night? And then you just got to let them know. It's going to be dope. It's going to be great. I got it.

Look, anything digital? We're going to, I got you. I got your back. So you never have to worry digitally, by the way, if, let's say I show up on set, my eyes are baggy, and I'm your lead guy or whatever, and it's a close-up, you're pushing in on a whatever, you know, you're really tight on me, and I've got big bags, and you just go in there digitally, you could make them better. Yeah, I mean, it's expensive. You know, you have a lot of actors have a digital makeup pass. You know, I remember people came out of some movie that started a bunch of women. They're like, oh, my God, they all look amazing.

They all look amazing. And, you know, having done it, like, everybody looks bad. Like, how do you maintain a consistent look? like you want your movie star to look like a movie star so in like uh the clock the house with the clock in the walls i'm sure you went digitally and make sure everybody looked because this is a certain feel of certain look everybody had to look pretty good yeah i mean we had a great looking cast and you know but everybody there's just certain times no one looks great all the time no one looks great all the time even with makeup it's two o'clock in the morning it's two

o'clock in the morning if you've got a long day you're gonna and you just let them know there's ways there's companies that I worked with like this company alchemy where you shouldn't know that it was done like we don't want people we don't want to turn people into marvel cartoon characters but there's ways to just like take off the edges and soften it like if someone gets a pimple you can take that out of a shot like it's gone like it's really like this actor will be freaking out like what's this thing right here and you can paint over it but really you just sort of in my budget I go and you and you kind of learn how to photograph your actors as you go during the shoot like this angle they look better they look better but also they know that like you're going to

take care of them some actors have it in their contract some actors can negotiate that as part of their deal like what you don't shoot with me with anything less than a 100 mil no there are actors that in their contract will have a uh um what is Woody harrelson say 75 I come alive it's like like when he's in close up he's yeah 75 I come alive that was but actors will have a digital pass as part of the thing. Like, okay, say you're trying to negotiate more money, more perks, the trailers, they're going to go, no, you have to put an allowance for digital fixes for this person. So they go through, they get to watch it and they go, well, there's this scene, this scene, and this scene. Can you please clean my eyes up? That's debatable. You don't want an actor sitting

in there, you know, they have to trust you. They just have to be like, you got this, right? And then if there's any question, you can show them a shot or two, be like, this is how it's going to look. Right. And they go, okay, great. But in terms of dealing with stars difficulties, Everybody has their moments, and my job is to, look, my dad's a psychiatrist, and I was a camp counselor and a babysitter, and that's your job, is to not get mad. I mean, sometimes you have to, like, when you feel like people are being lethargic, you leave the charge, or it's a difficult thing, or there's an accident, or things go wrong. You have to be positive, you have to be upbeat.

You set the pace. Like, I'm the pace car. And if I have energy and I'm focused and there's a plan and you're respectful of crew member's time, then they'll do it. They'll kick ass for you because they know you're not, they're like, as soon as we get our work done, we do it well and we can go home Have you ever lost your shit? Have you ever like one time?

Of course. I mean, you're on set and you're like, that's not what I fucking wanted for the fifth time. I allow myself once a movie. Once a movie, I'm allowed to lose my shit. Does it feel good, kind of? Or do you feel bad? No, because when the lion roars,

it's like I have a very, very, very loud. I mean, the problem that I noticed like on Hostel was I was so concerned with, because I was young, it was like 32. and it was like the age of the crew members. A lot of crew members are old. So suddenly this American guy is coming and it wasn't like a 55 year old, like, tyrant kind of.

It was like, oh, it's Eli, he's our buddy. And they started slipping. And people went out like in the middle of the shoot. They were dropping shots because everyone had a party. People were like out doing Coke all night. Like the crew members were. And then the next day they were showing up late. They were coming to set in the wrong costumes.

The extras weren't ready. And I just lost it. And we fired a bunch of people. And I was like, this isn't a party. And then I realized it's my fault. for letting them think it was. Like, I shouldn't, you know, I can be respectful and I can be nice, but I was trying so hard to be like the cool director

that had fun with everybody. And ultimately, everybody just wants to be really proud. Like, I realize that you can have a fun shoot, but if you make a movie that becomes like a cool movie, that's a hit movie, those crew members are so, so proud to have participated in it, especially hostile, which was like an outside-the-box weird, outside-house, Hollywood movie with mostly foreign actors made Improval like no one expected it so that like they had

such pride like oh yeah I built those I painted those walls I did the torture chambers we were pumping the blood we were filming there like they've great like they got a lot of you know they they just had that pride like that's what people want those coke addicts they got fired they're not they don't have a lot of pride right now they're like god that either all fucking fired you know it's the thing is it's funny like none of them were bad people I just think that I let my guard down, and there were a couple of them that were letting everyone else feel like it was okay, and that it's no big deal. Let's just go out and have fun. And once you cleared out a couple of them, everyone else snapped in line. They got it. Oh, my gosh, are we next? Don't we?

I mean, look, that happened. Look, in Green Inferno, you know, we were in the jungle, and there was like, we had a midway point. There was like a party in what kind of we finished Peru. We were going back to Santiago and like I mean crew members went nuts but at least we were going back to Chile with a new crew and I just saw you see these side of people at these kind of rap parties midway parties you're like oh my God what like I've never done coke in my life after land bias I was like I was always scared to be allergic to it you're an erotic chew like me we don't want to do that but it's to me when it's if you want to do that in your own time do it but when it starts costing you shots when the production's affected and people are being sloppy that's

when you're like okay all right this is called shit talking with the Eli Roth. These are questions from my patrons. Spitfire. Rapid fire. I say spitfire. Can I not say Spitfire? I'll say whatever the fuck I want. It's my podcast. Shit talk with Eli Roth. Here we go. Ashley G., what terrifies you the most? The thought that I might die without, like, too many unfinished ideas in my head. I thought you can see like burning alive or something. Oh, burning alive is awful. I mean, like, yeah, I don't want, by the way, but I don't want to be like, oh, acid attack. Then everyone's like, hmm. You know, like. Go with your ideas, Eli. Go with that one. that I die without being able to get all my ideas out, that's, that's terrifying. Maria M. Who inspired you to be a director?

Ridley Scott. I watched Alien. It was a combination of alien and it was like the combination of Jaws and Star Wars. And the idea, I remember that was the first time I was conscious of what a director was, where it said, produced by David Giler and Walter Hill. And I said to my dad, who took me, I was eight. He's like, I said, I want to be a producer. He said, well, the producer has to come up with all the money. It's a directed by Ridley Scott. I was like, what does the director do? He goes, well, the director gets to spend all the money and tell everybody what to do. I'm going to be a director.

It was really tough. And then I was aware of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, but the first time I read a credit that said directed by and I want to do that, alien. Wow. Of course, it was Sam Ramey that made it accessible. Like Spielberg was always like, and Lucas were these gods.

Evil Dead too. Or Evil Dead. Right. And reading in Fangoria when I was like 13 that Sam Ramey was 21 or 20 when he made it, I was like, that's not that far away. This is like he made that this is what you can do with $350,000 in a cabin in the woods.

I didn't really, that's when I was starting to learn the difference between independent and studio and 16 millimeter and 35 and Sam Ramee making Evil Dead. That's why Cabin Fever. I was like, I'm going to get a, I'm going to make a bunch of kids in a cabin movie and just go out there and make a bloody mess and come back with the footage. Hey, put me in Bruce Campbell in one of your horror movies. Will you please? By the way, I found my casting list for Hostel and it was like Michael Rosenbaum, Unavail, Smallville. You know what? I remember being at the airport. No, I remember being at the car dealer like Enterprise and you called me and you were in Europe.

and, uh, you're like, hey, you want to come do hostile. You called me and asked me. And I was like, I'm going, I'm doing smallville. And cabin fever, I for saying, I still, I told you about it. I still regret it to this day because I love both those movies. You blew up. You couldn't move. They wouldn't let you leave.

They're like, we can't. Dude, they wouldn't let me do anything. How was your moment? Like, that was like suddenly you're the star of the biggest show on television. But still, to do a horror movie, a gritty horror movie with one of your best buds. We also thought I'd be making 30 of those. a year. We're like, this is easy. I'm going to keep it, you know, like. Jesus.

All right, Leanne P. What new hobbies have you? I heard you just say we will. I heard that. Leanne P. What new hobbies have you acquired you to the quarantine? Rapid Fire. Here we go. Jump rope. What? Jump rope. Jump rope. You have great legs. I always remember your legs being really strong and great.

Thank you, Michael. That's all I want to be known. You're welcome. Bobby, whatever happened to Thanksgiving, white meat, dark meat, all will be carved. We have it ready. The script is done. I have it set up. And it's basically a timing of coronavirus and borderlands. Like I'd like to do borderlands and do Thanksgiving,

but I have the script on and we have the production ready to go. We just, we actually were going to shoot it, but I wanted to shoot it now or maybe sneak it in before borderlands. But Corona hit, so it's just making it. The problem is Thanksgiving is a lower budget movie. You know, if you have, just for people know, if they're making a $200 million dollar movie, if you have to add a million and a half dollars in corona testing,

and then if there's a shutdown, spend five, million in a shutdown. It's not worth it. It's tough thinking about it. But on a $10 million movie or something or 15, like anything that's under 20 million, you can't like spend a million dollars testing. So until that gets sorted out a little bit, it's just got a, it's ready to go. It's basically packed up and ready to go. Chris M. I'm going to answer this question around. What age did you become aware of your love for horror movies? I'm going to say eight. Eight for sure. Thank you. And was it something you enjoyed watching with friends or family growing up? It is. You know, I remember when they came on TV, my brothers, you know, my two brothers, my parents,

we'd all sit around and watch horror movies, like when they were, especially when I got, we got a VCR when I was like 11, 10 or 11, and we could just start ingesting all of those films. So our basement was where we were allowed to watch anything because my parents had just let all the kids. And my brothers are two years older and two years younger. So there was always like a couple friends.

It was always like a gang of like nine or 10 of us in the basement, which was enough to have like playing like street hockey sticks. Like we would slap shot tennis balls. It was my German Shepherd's mouth. He was the goalkeeper. or playing like four square watching horror movies and hockey in the basement. Like that was, that's where we grew up.

I bet it just smelled like farts and cheese down there. Jennifer C, were you able to keep the bat from Inglorious Bastards? Quentin took the bat. There was another bat, like a backup bat that I got, but Quentin got the original one. Ashley E., what's your favorite scary movie? I don't know. It's hard.

It changes at times, but the one that I go back to over and over, The Shining. It's like The Shining Exorcist, The Thing, Evil Dead. Those shining Exorcists and the, like, the thing. People don't give enough credit to Exorcist 3. Oh, Joe Bob Briggs showed it on a shutter this year. I love it. Little Lisa, what's seen in a movie has evoked the most feelings out of you?

Wow, that's a really good one. I mean, you know, it's obviously at different ages. When I was a kid that's seen in Willie Wonka when he goes on the boat and they see all the images and the chicken with the head being cut off. Being Slugworth, that was like one of the most amazing. that last battle at Pepperland and Yellow Sunmarine where it's all too much with the stuff where that mesmerized me

but really the scene that I just drew over and over was like Luke and you know the lightsaber fight between Darth Vader and Ben Kenobi as a kid like I don't think I'll ever have that sensation but really maybe the chest bursting an alien was yeah maybe the shining

the door with his face chopping that door down when she's stuck in that little bathroom trying to get her son out oh I'll never forget that feeling. I have a book, like, when I was in school, when I was eight years old, they gave us a book where we could color. And so, like, we could do anything. So I would sit and I would draw Star Wars. This is like a good look into my brain. And there was just, I really wanted to rewrite Star Wars. I had credit. Very soon, I had coming attractions for movies.

Oh my God. I was eight when I drew that. Alien. Rated R. I was like, okay. My teacher's like, what are you drawing? I'm like, I'm drawing a poster for 10. It was two people in a bed. This is my eight-year-old brain. This is literally what I was. I was doing in school. And they were like, look, young Frankenstein, Jaws, Jaws. This is the most accurate representation of me as a child. Have you shown this book? I've, like, put the photos out there before.

I love that. Oh, yeah, look, this is another one. This got my parents, this, like, serious phone calls. Oh, Lord. Is that puke? Yes. That's her puking all over the place. That's you at eight.

This is eight. Is that Raj says, is there a practical effect within your movies you're particularly proud of pulling off? The leg shaving and cabin fever. We did practically. Disgusting. The Achilles break, we took the kill bill legs and you reused them for a hostel and then I put a broccoli snap. But the simple things, like in Thanksgiving, like the girl impaled on the cheerleader, we just stuck the knife through trampoline and had her land and then just edited them together.

And it was the most effective kill. But there was actually, it was actually a trick with editing. So it was literally the most effective kill. And Quentin was like that was the biggest shock in Grindhouse, the three and a half hours, that girl landing on the trampoline. And it was nothing. We didn't even do anything. Maddie S, have any events that have happened in 2020 inspired you either directly or indirectly

in your writing and or for future films? Definitely. I mean, I think that it's interesting because all of my films are about of, you know, a loss of control. It's about culture clash and kind of a loss, a loss of control of certain themes that I'm obsessed with and breakdown of society where I felt like the pandemic started as Cabin fever and then it like suddenly the like riots are happening and it's becoming aftershock and then everyone's arming up and it's death wish

and you know it's it's like all of these things that i've dealt with in the activism is green inferno so i feel like all of these themes that i've touched on have uh have come up in the pandemic i hope it doesn't turn into hostile but all right so look lastly at my my i have so i have these horror patrons and it's called where have all the good horror movies gone all right because for me I'm not scared very often I just nothing really scares me and there's been some movies that you know it follows

the movies that you talked about there's been some that really actually like scare me in recent times I just there's not hereditary was pretty good I just saw the relic the new one I liked it kind of creeped me out kind of was like the first time I was felt scared what is there anything recently

in the last 20 years that actually scares you, like, wow, this is a scary movie? Or what is it about the lack of really scary movies? Like, for instance, and I'll let you answer, the orphanage, La Orphanage, Guillermo de Toro. When I first saw that, I don't know what happened. I was terrified. The hairs on my arms when they're in the house with the video cameras,

I have never been more frightened. So I'm wondering Why are there so many horror movies But not that many really scary movies And for you, what is it that scares you And why is it that there aren't a ton of really scary movies And maybe some that I haven't seen that you could recommend Well, it's hard to be scary

You know, it's really hard You got to capture some essence of something And do it in this uncanny way The way that Blair Witch did in paranormal activity Where you're watching it happen to real people And you just feel this sense of helplessness And it feels like they're just can't capturing what actually happens in little versions that we've all kind of felt in our life.

The thing is, like, imagine a cologne that every time, like, you have perfume, like every time you open it, it loses a little bit of potency. Like, every time you watch a movie again, the ride is never scary the second time through. So the purity of a horror film is the circumstances under which you watch it the first time matter, because that's going to determine how scary it is. If you watch in a dark room by yourself, you're going to get freaked out. If you're watching it, you know, with a bunch of people in the middle of the day on a phone, it's not going to be that scary.

If you go back and watch it again, it's never as scary because you know it's coming. People are like, oh, like I always see these at the end of the decade. You'll see these moronic top 10 movies of the decades, top 10 scariest movies. And they're always the movies that are in the last year because they'll go, you know, we went back and we rewatch the ring and it wasn't that scary. It's like the ring's a great film, the Japanese version and Gore of Binsky. That is a great movie. And it achieves greatness.

And it's terrifying and beautiful and haunted. and everything about it works, the low budget and the Hollywood remake. But if you watch it again, you're never going to be scared because you know what happens. You know, it's like, then you're watching it for other reasons. I think that recently the films that I watched, the one that I love the most that got me was trained to Busan. Me too. That movie, I was like in tears by the end of it.

Not so scary, but just so intense. Tension. I care so much about these characters. I want this to end. This is a nightmare. This is so... This is so good. Unbelievable.

I mean, it's also hard to recreate that feeling of when you're a kid, you know, when you're older. I know. Certain things, like, you know, the ghost isn't going to be as like, you know, when you're a kid and that stuff's more real. Yeah. I mean, hostile really was just tension and it was horrifying. There's no doubt about I walked out of there going, holy shit. I watch it now and I'm like, what was I, like, why would I, you know, I know why I did it and I'm not disowning it. Because you're fucked.

Man, I had something to prove. I was like, this is a nuts movie. I was like, this is insane. So, it's fun to do that, though. It's fun to push the buttons. It's fun to try and find what's great. It's hard, though, because I have that same disappointment you do. I'll watch anything.

I mean, I've been watching, I've been going through like old 80s movies. Me too. Movies like Evils of the Night and Snapshot. There's a lot of stuff I'd missed or never heard of. Those hold up. You're not looking for them to be great movies, but there's certain movies that, like Angel, Angel's really good. Remember, she was like an honor student by day,

Streetwalker by night. Yeah. And it's beautifully shot by Andrew Davis, directed the fugitive shot. Like the camera works amazing in Angel. And you're like, they're shooting it all around Hollywood Boulevard. And right,

I was like, oh, this is a movie that is not just like some canon movie that I remembered that, you know, did you see incident in a ghost town? No. In a ghost land.

Incident in a ghost land. Worst title in history. No, I didn't. I'll tell you what. It's the guy who directed, martyrs. Oh, yeah, Pascal. I know, yeah, you know what? I actually have it. I actually have it. You know what? I liked it. I think, I think you might like it. I liked it. I thought it was intense.

He's a nice, he's a nice dude. Dude, I love you. This has been great. Have you had fun? It's the best. Such a nice break from what I'm normally thinking about. You're a great interviewer, Michael. Oh, well, you're great. Because you know, you have so much insight. Like, I honestly, sometimes I learn a lot. And like, the things that you said today just about just work ethic and had it and just, you know, the psychology of it all. And I think it was very helpful. I think a lot of people are going to be. I really, I highly recommend Stephen King's book on writing. If you get the audio book, he reads it and it's pretty fast. It's like a two or three hour read. And it's just, it's all about the creative process and what he does every day in his routine. And it's really

like just makes it kind of diffuses the mystery and makes it relatable. Like when people ask me about a good book about creative process, um, that creativity ink, Ed Catmull's book, but Stephen King's book on writing is really fantastic. And it's not, you don't feel like it, because he's obviously one of the best horror writers in history, if not the best. It's not condescending. It's easy to read and comprehend. Everyone. It's for everyone to understand.

Yes. No, I'm saying it's like not if you're a writer, like, just about the creative process and what he does and stories and childhood and starting out. Like at the audiobook, you can listen to it on double speed or speed and a half and be done in like two or three hours. But it really, the principles of just sitting down and pushing yourself and doing the work and moving forward and not looking back and not revising too much. It's really great. Dude, I love, I love this. I love seeing you. you really i'm not just saying this you look fantastic you do you look really i don't know

you're either your lighting is spectacular or you have an age you really look good when they see this i i actually have it in my contract to do a digital retouch so oh nice callback you brought it back i like that lastly i'm going to say this men's fitness voted you most fit director in 2006 and all i could think of was who the fuck was he going against there is no competitor jackson it's basically like being you know best answer to bar mitzvah. Not husky. Not husky at the bar mitzvah.

But like, you're just like, well, yeah, most fit director, it's basically if you can button your pants. Why is that? Because they're so stressed. All they do is eat craft services and that's it. And they're, yeah. And actually, I've had fights with the directors about this who got so mad at me because on the behind the scenes of the DVDs, I was always in shape.

And they're like, you in that fucking article, man, I was doing great as a fat Now they look at you and they're like, how come you don't look like him? How come directors aren't supposed to, like, you know, we grew up, they had like the beer and the parka and they were like Brian De Palma, they were like husky dudes. And I was like, okay, I got to, but then I started reading the life expectancy of directors.

Someone said it's 57. And I was like, okay, I could see that from stress and eating. And I was like, all right, I'm gonna make a change. I wanna be like just in shape because I want to live. And Quentin's theory about directors that start to lose it because they get comfortable in the chair. They don't want to get up. They don't want to leave Video Village.

You know, Hitchcock directs his last movie from a trailer. Like, you can't, you know, it's going to affect your movies if you just sort of leave it to the DP and check the monitor and go back to eating. Like if you're up and around and running, you know, and you're active, you're going to make a better movie. Dude, if I ever get him on the podcast, he came up to me at a bowling guy once goes, fucking Lex Luthor. I go, you're quitting Tarantino. I love him. You think he'd ever come on the pod? He doesn't do that, does he?

Like, he goes on movie podcasts he likes because he wants to talk about movie stuff. you know like there's certain movies that like podcast that he was doing for once upon a time in Hollywood that was like oh wow quentin went and did like four hours nerding out with these guys it's impressive like the movie well maybe after this air is one of his best friends eli you could send it to him and say hey rosy's a great interview you know i will for sure would you yeah and then i'll be like hey michael can you start my horror movie you'd be like sorry i'm in tarentinos fuck no i'd do anything for you bud you know that best man i love you when this is over we're gonna hug it out and i just want to hang out and watch a horror movie with you old time

I got it's all I'm doing writing and watching movies I love you you're the best all right see you I wanted to talk to him for another easily another 20 minutes 20 30 minutes I mean really I just I had so many more questions

I want to you know pick his room one of the things I didn't ask him is like sort of mentioned it but he does so many things so I always you know he says well it's because you don't want to focus you know put all your eggs in one basket because then you're going to be like oh fuck that didn't work so I have nothing so he's always spinning plates now you know you have all these

plates spinning and you're like okay okay this one this one but do you think that maybe the quality of work diminishes when you have so many projects because if only one gets going then you're okay but how do you and maybe it's just me because he's smarter than I am obviously but uh I always say that I shouldn't say that because that's bad therapy I'm smart but you know how do you I can't what's the word multitask? as well so like if I'm you know to do three projects at the same time seems like I'm going to have a heart attack like he said directors have heart attacks at 57 maybe that's just how he does it um I feel like I want to get the best chance to make that one project that goes great put all my time

into that so it's the best that it could be and not like oh I have a meeting and and um I don't know how he does it but he's he's able to do that and um I commend him for it I do I do I I look up to people who could actually deal with more pressure and stressful situations. And is it possible that maybe I'm just not meant to be stressed as much? Or maybe I stress myself out so much that unless I learn how to deal with that, it's just not good. People just operate on different wavelengths. It depends.

Some people are better at just doing everything all the time and some people are better at focusing on one thing. Do you get overwhelmed where you can feel yourself going, what do you do? show me like your body movement and your you're sort of physiological uh like what happens to you when you feel like you're getting like that uh i mean it just feels very i don't know it just feels like really tense in here it sort of feels like your heart's being like just like wrung out like it like a towel i don't know if like it's scare you yeah and how often does it happen i mean these days all the time because you know it's just you it's you it's hard to find any solace in the regular world because the regular world i mean i'm here i'm wearing a mask because that's just what it is so it's hard not to be

all the time uh i mean i don't know like i think there if i need a moment i will i will literally i'll grab one of my guitars and i'll just go lie on my bed like and stare at the ceiling and just noodle and that's and that if i can find a moment to do that i'll do that for half an hour see you're using those but sometimes but sometimes when i'm like really deep into it i just want to like go deeper into it and just like keep working and keep working and i

and i just won't find the time to to not stress out right Your mask is stressing me out because your nose is showing. It's small and you because you know what you have headphones on. It's over the wire now. I think you. Did you wash it? Mistake. You got a hand wash those things.

Really? I've seen so many runners just like with the mask just below the nose. That's not how it works, bro. I've said things to some. I went to a restaurant just get takeout and her nose is showing and I actually almost turned around and left. And she's like, I can help you. And I go, uh, cover your nose please.

I was nice about it. Oh, I'm sorry. And I'm like, yeah, it's all right. just don't touch my food by the way again the birthday messages the the the messages on twitter i thought you know i man so supportive and by the way how cool is that pill leah stubbs and christin they made that for me uh it's just incredible look at that all the names embroidered of all the guests uh i'm gonna fall asleep on that and salivate and the pillows i mean come on my face on it are you farting on my pillow over there all the time all right here

the shoutouts to the patrons. Real big, lastly, thank you to my good friend Al Goff, creator of Smallville, who listens to every podcast, Dan Cook, who's a big support of the podcast, all my friends out there, Julie Benz, I mean, there's a lot of people that,

I'm naming celebrities that listen to the podcast, Sean Gunn and Chris Sullivan, and, you know, it's nice when you get messages saying, hey, man, I really liked your podcast, because look, it's one thing, of course, you know, your fans, your friends, your listeners, your family but when your peers also like it it just the fuck it makes you feel good man i like it so hey if you want to join patreon inside of you support the podcast more if you like a lot of fun goodies

there and prizes i'll be doing an instagram live this week um what else uh and then me and john heater with the where have all the good horror movies gone patreon exclusive you go to patreon and uh zoom with us and have fun it's a fun little horror club uh you got anything going on that you need Anybody to know about there, Ryan? Not at the moment. All right. July 30th, Informa, I will do a virtual con with Tom Welling. We're going to do Zooms and all that stuff.

It's soon. It's like in two days. Here are my patrons. I just want to give a shout out to Nancy D. Mary B. Leah S. Trisha F. Sarah, V. Little Lisa, Yukiko. Jill E. Brian H. Lauren, G. L.N. H. L.N. H. L.E. B. B. B. I love reading these names. I always say that, but I do.

Angelina G. G. Lee. Robin S. Cherry, S. Cherry, Kevin R. Emily K. Bob B. Robert B. Jason W. Stephen J. Kristen K. Amelia D. Allison L. Tom N. Jess J. Lucas M. Raj. Joshua D. Emily S. We're getting more and more, man. People are really joining this Patreon tier, the top tier there and support. It's just unbelievable. I'm like, holy shit, man. Hopefully I can quit my job someday and just be a patron. Just do Patreon. Just hang out with all these folks. I can't wait to throw a big party. B. It's funny because I just sent a lot of these people mugs. There's autograph mugs that you can get online. We just ran out, but I ordered more and

masks and shirts and all sorts of shit. Hamza B. Jennifer and Stacey. Beth Carly T. Ream. Jennifer S. Janelle B. Tabitha C. Kimberly E. Melissa C. Mike E. Jake M. Marissa and Judith D. Ramira. Beth B.

Chris F. Sarah F. Chad W. Leanne P. Hi. Jackie P. Rodriguez. S. three go rachel c ray a maya p megan d jennifer c mattie mattie s hi sorry mattie tiffany i i think it's tiffany i it's got to be an i always well it would be an l it's tiffany i right it's a straight line yes tiffany i i i missed her name up last time kendrick f ashly e margie m sigourney p tom t matt w belinda n benjamin r lisa j kevin v robert s and joy Pump it up, pump it up, in pain. Joy, W.

Thank you guys for listening. Support charities, help people out. We've got foodonfoot.org. Am I wearing that hat? Right? Foodonfoot.org. I'm hosting a thing for food on foot to try and help raise money. So it's great.

It helps homeless people and like no other organization does for homeless people. It's unbelievable. And many of you have donated and I get these calls saying, another one of your listeners from the podcast or patrons donated. Rob calls me and goes, donated to food on foot. I'm like, are you kidding me? They already give so much. I just, fuck, so nice.

Sorry about the F bombs. I usually don't F bomb this much, but I'm F bombing. Also, of course, Ronald McDonald House of Los Angeles. Love my folks. Another shout out to my buddy who I met at the Ronald McDonald House. Preston Christensen. I love him. So for his birthday, I got him.

So we're a big Jim Crocey fans. He's 14. He just turned 14. And I turned 48, three days later. I got him a turntable, an old Jim Crocey album sealed, like an old album, and a Jim Crocey shirt. So he and his mom sent me some videos of them. And I just love that kid.

He's a good kid. And then I called the radio station Lisa Fox here in L.A., and she said, this goes out to Preston Christensen. and he's like what it was so cool man i actually cried i listened to it on the radio alone i was like it's so sweet such an idiot but uh and echoes of hope of course thank you guys so much i hope you enjoyed eli roth i did i think it was great spread the word man it's up to you guys it really is spread the word subscribe do what you got to do help me help you i love you and uh ryan you love them i love them too thank you for allowing me to be in

of each and every one of you. Hi, I'm Joe Saul-Sehi, host of the Stacking Benjamin's podcast. Today, we're going to talk about what if you came across $50,000. What would you do? Put it into a tax-advantaged retirement account. The mortgage, that's what we do. Make a down payment on a home. Something nice.

Buying a vehicle. A separate bucket for this edition that we're adding. $50,000, I'll buy a new podcast. You'll buy new friends. And we're done. Thanks for playing, everybody. We're out of here. Stacky Benjamin's, follow and listen on your favorite platform.