Letters from Filmmakers Part II: This one was published today at MSN Movies, a response from Eli Roth to an article by Don Kaye about the phenomenon popularly known as "torture porn":
Don,I saw your article on "Torture Porn," and while I disagree with you about your criticism of my film, I would like you to back up how "Hostel II" is a failure, a claim you repeatedly make. While the film did not do what the first film did at the box office, (which was a total shock to everyone - myself included) "Hostel II" cost only $10 million dollars to make, and is currently at $30 million dollars worldwide box office, with many territories left to open. How many other films this summer have earned triple their production budget in their theatrical run? Are those films failures as well?
Critically, your comments were that I had MTV style editing and a lack of character development. What, exactly, are you talking about? "Hostel II" has barely any flashy cuts or MTV-style editing, and the first 45 minutes of the movie is all character development with almost zero on screen violence. Heather Matarazzo's torture scene doesn't happen until nearly 50 minutes into the movie.
It sounds to me like you are jumping onto some kind of 'anti-violence' crusade without actually watching the film, when if you looked closely, you'd see that my film actually has a very strong anti-violence moral core. Writers I respect such as Stephen King, Elvis Mitchell, and writer/Attorney Julie Hilden, a former clerk for supreme court Justice Breyer, praised the film specifically for its anti-violence message and skilled filmmaking (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20070716.html) and in Europe the major critics hailed the film for its political messages against corporations that profit from the death of Americans.
My films are not for everyone, and many critics dismissed the film because of the violent scenes, which is the very thing horror fans are paying for when they see a film like "Hostel II." But to lump my film in with other films that may be ripping off a trend for "MTV editing" and "lack of character development" shows more of a reflection of your lack of understanding as a critic and a desire to be seen as a 'moral person' than an actual critique of my film.
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It also happens that [Ryan Rotten is] yet another one of these internet 'critics' I've seen kicking around the horror scene for years who have told me numerous times how they really want to write and direct, and probably are not writing the most objective reviews. Did you bother to talk to anyone actually involved in the movie before you pronounced it a 'failure?' and saying it 'tanked' Because failure in my book is someone who lives in the safety of their laptop taking shots at those who actually achieved what they have been unable to do.For clarification: Box Office Mojo reports that "Hostel Part II" grossed $17.6 million at the domestic box office, and nearly $30 million worldwide. The film took in 46.6 percent of its domestic total in its first weekend ($8.2 million -- 2,350 screens; $3,490 per-screen average), dropping 63 percent in its second weekend, 70 percent in its third, and 84 percent in its fourth.Many people had their knives out for me long before my film opened, simply because of who I am and the nature of my films. They will tell you "Hostel II" is a failure no matter what, despite the fact we are into profits before we come out on DVD, which is a rare feat for almost any film released theatrically. I made the film I wanted the way I wanted, with risky subject matter and a superb cast who are not (yet) major box office stars, got it released in theaters all over the world, and turned a profit before our theatrical run was finished. If that's not success, then we should all be so lucky to have 'failures' like "Hostel Part II" in our careers.
Sincerely,
Eli Roth
As I wrote back in March (echoed by this New York Times piece from yesterday):
It's not uncommon for a movie's grosses to plummet by 50 or 60 percent in the second weekend. Is that because of negative reviews? No. Is it because people who have seen the movie don't like it, and tell their friends? Not necessarily. In many instances, this is by design. It's because the hype has been so effective, and the movie available on so many screens, that most of the people who would be interested in seeing that particular movie already bought their tickets on the first weekend. One reason for staggering showtimes across multiple mall-tiplex screens is so that, if one showing in theater 3 sells out, ticket-buyers aren't turned away; they just have to wait around another 20 minutes for the next show in theater 12.From the NYT story, "Summer Cinema's One-Week Wonders" (07/18/07):In fact, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, "300" dropped 56.3 percent in its second weekend (even though it bulked up with an additional 167 screens, the box-office equivalent of steroids); "Ghost Rider" was off 55.8 percent in weekend number two; and "Norbit" was down 50.9 percent. Put another way: "Hostel," the top-grossing hit of January, 2006, did 41.3 percent of its total domestic gross in its first three days. It lasted only 39 more days in theaters. But, for the "distribution gurus," a flash-in-the-pan is a good thing. A modern major movie release has a planned obsolescence (of about six to eight weeks) built in to its distribution and marketing strategy from the start. The idea is the same as fast food. It's all about turnover: Push last weekend's movies out to make room for next weekend's Number One Box-Office Champ!
After its superstrong $182 million opening week in May, “Spider-Man 3” plunged at the box office by 61 percent the next week. “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” sank like a stone in its second week, dropping 66 percent. And when the box office gross for “Transformers” fell by only 47 percent after a week in theaters, Hollywood marveled at the movie’s strength.The movie business has been heading this way for years, but this summer is proving the apotheosis of the one-week blockbuster. The blur of big-budget films may have left moviegoers with whiplash, given how quickly each film announces itself in television ads and then disappears from marquees, yet few in Hollywood are complaining. Far from it, since the steep drop-offs are largely fueled by a run of blockbusters from every major studio, and Hollywood has a chance of breaking 2004’s summer box office record.
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The blockbuster onslaught has been driven partly by a shift in the way studios and theater chains divide up box office receipts. Until several years ago, most of the grosses went to the studios initially, but theaters benefited more the longer a film played. As a result, megaplex owners had a financial disincentive to play a new movie on too many screens.
Now studios and theater chains typically agree on a flat percentage split, no matter how long a movie plays. So “Pirates,” “Spider-Man 3” and “Shrek the Third,” for example, each opened on more than 10,000 screens in May.
“We don’t care anymore whether we generate revenue in the first week, the third or the fifth,” said Mike Campbell, chief executive of Regal Cinemas, the nation’s biggest theater chain.
With cinemas freed to put each week’s new blockbuster on enough screens to offer show times every 20 minutes, the pressure on studios to deliver huge opening weeks has reached new proportions....
I wonder what the odds were that my two least favorite directors making movies today would write open letters to two critics who dared say something negative about their latest films in the span of a couple days?
This is interesting as well. I like how Roth said he spent the first half of the movie developing his characters. One's a slut. One's a Sandra Dee. One's a big sister. One of the torture business men is into torture, one is skittish about it but too timid to tell him. Now there's some character development if I ever saw it.
There are also some interesting pieces at the end here. If Hollywood wants to have one-weekend wonders that come in, make their money, and are gone just as fast, do they plan on making more movies to cover that major movies will get a shorter release time?
I also loved how he justified his films on TV with 9/11. Because since then, people have had the urge to scream, and couldn't really do it anywhere else.
Did anyone else think he was incredibly bad and distracting as an actor in Grindhouse? Aside from a vage memory of a few pictures on the net, I had no idea what Eli Roth looked like, but knew he was a friend of QT's. As soon as he started acting, I thought it was him, because something felt really off. And when I looked him up on imdb, true enough, it was him.
Roth is correct in several of the things he says but just because he waited 50 minutes before the first torture scene doesn't mean that time was spent "developing the characters". Also people need to hold off on calling films financial failures that are actually just disappointments. And I don't even like Roth's films, Cabin Fever and Hostel were both pretty bad. I have no objection to torture in films it's just that the films that are ABOUT torture tend to be annoying regardless of how well they're made.
I like Roth. Unlike a lot of people who attack the critics/journalists who attack their movies (Rob S., Kevin S.) Roth seems to have something smart to say. Bad character development is still character development, and I think the development in this was better than in the first. It would be nice if some of these writer/directors let someone else have stabs at drafts of their films, just to smooth those kinds of things over.
This was my post to Don Kaye, who wrote the original column Eli is so upset about.
Mr. Kaye, I think both yourself and Eli have very good points. Yours, in that violence for violence sake does not an engaged audience make. And Eli, in that his movie, from an independent standpoint, was a success.
As someone with a very low tolerance for horror films, I have seen only enough to make me not ever want to watch hardcore splatter flicks in this lifetime. But I have an outsider observation. It is my understanding that the majority audience for both porn and horror flicks is adult males. It is also my understanding that the majority of victims or “stars” in these flicks are female. (Unless we are talking gay porn, which is well off my topic here.)
It seems to me that men in our culture are raised to feel that if they have not inflicted routine violence on someone or something as they are growing up - they are somehow not real men. It also seems to me that most adult males, unless they are recruited into the military during wartime, do not go around hacking people’s limbs off in ever more sadistic ways (though again, the majority of the perpetrators of these crimes are males.)
Furthermore, as most of these regular men are not generally over the top violent, they can only really imagine doing damage to someone much weaker than themselves, hence in our culture, women and children, and in the case of Michael Vick - dogs. Which leaves them with only three illegal outlets – wife beating, child abuse, and animal abuse; or three sanctioned outlets – sports, military, and horror porn. And if they are not into illegal activity, and not good at sports or not enlisted in the military, they are most assuredly going to gravitate towards these very imaginary, or virtual, forms of ritual gore.
So it is my humble and not exactly well-researched opinion that horror films are a way for less violent males to feel as if they have, in some intense way, participated in this implied violence ritual without actually having to get their hands bloody or having to take on a potentially dangerous situation that would place them outside the perimeters of regulated society.
The only thing that gets to me, as an outsider to this genre, is that the victims in these films are so unimportant and sacrificial, as if there will always be in the splatter universe an infinite supply of fresh young bodies and screaming blood factories. Just as there will always be another country we can vilify, attack, rape and conquer, regardless of morality or global opinion.
It seems to me that we are being told the ugliness of this world is inevitable, and we might as well get used to it. Become immune to it almost, which Mr. Kaye points out is what seems to happen to him when he is watching some of the more gratuitous violence onscreen. And I begin to fear this bloody microcosm is how we ended up in the macrocosm of the seemingly endless war in Iraq – because no one ever bothers to think of violence as one of many options - diplomacy and sanctions being another – and instead regards violence as the inevitable outcome of all human endeavor.
This underlying belief that only our basest nature triumphs in the end is what keeps me away from such films, but I also know this is too much to expect from such a low genre, so I don’t fight it or censor it – I just choose not to participate. But it gives me a glimmer of hope to hear that the worst of these films, the most gratuitous and least story driven, do not do as well at the box office.
I like to believe that at our core, we humans try to overcome our limitations, not drown ourselves in them like bikini bimbos swimming in our own blood. So splatter on, you men wanting to be warriors in a society where there is no honor in your skills and abilities, only in your brute, bloody force.
Jimmy Stewart may not be a viable icon in our culture anymore, but some of us can still dream can’t we?
This seems to be an unpopular opinion here, but I liked Hostel 2, and although I'm hardly going to claim it changed my life or deserves awards, it was far more clever and thought-provoking than the Don Kaye article would have you believe.