A biography for Eli Rothhasn’t been written yet.
“When someone throws up while watching one of your movies, it's like a standing ovation.”
“I have a strong art-history background.”
“When I was 22, I had this horrible psoriasis outbreak. It was all over my legs, I couldn't walk because my legs were cracked and bleeding. Weird things like that can happen to your body.”
“I want people to see my name on a movie, pay money and know they're going to be entertained for 90 minutes.”
“You know, the dirty secret in the Director's Guild is that the average life expectancy of Director's Guild members is 57 years old. The stress level is so high and directors are generally really out of shape, cause they sit in the chair and they eat craft service.”
“Horror is like comedy. Woody Allen's comedy is going to be very different from Ben Stiller's comedy which is going to be different from Adam Sandler's comedy which is going to be different from Judd Apatow's comedy. They're all comedy, but they're all very different types and you can enjoy all of them. Horror is the same way.”
“If someone gets up and walks out of the movie, it means it's really affected them.”
“There's fear in everything, but we can't just succumb to that. We have to suppress it, so we get used to suppressing fear to make it through the our day. Otherwise, we'd become paralyzed by them.”
“The one negative to horror is that it's always law of diminishing returns. When you go in the funhouse, the ride is never scary the second time. You will never have that pure experience as when you first watch it.”
“It's just assumed that a horror sequel is going to be bad. It's never going to be as good as the first one.”
“Chile could work as a double for L.A.; it's very production-friendly and there's terrific talent down there.”
“Possession and exorcism is something that's in every religion and every culture. It's a real primal fear: Is the body a vessel for our spirits? What happens if something else takes over it? Where does the spirit go?”
“I saw 'Alien' when I was 8 years old. To me, it was like a combination of Jaws and Star Wars, and that's the movie that made me want to be a director.”
“I need to eliminate 'like' from my vocabulary. I begin sentences with, 'That's seriously like... ' I hear myself talking in this Los Angeles high-school student kind of way, and I hate it.”
“I get a little too obsessive with work.”
“Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.”
“The film, 'Aftershock,' for me is really about how the minor problems in life that we think are so major ultimately mean nothing when a tragedy happens, when a real problem happens.”
“I think horror should never be safe, whether it's violent or non violent.”
“I can think of endless horrible things to do to people!”
“It's very flattering to feel like you actually helped create a sub-genre.”